


the skies'll be blue for all my life

by starknight



Category: Doctor Who & Related Fandoms, Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: Canon Compliant, Cuddling & Snuggling, Domestic Fluff, Enemies to Lovers, Fluff, Hateful Cuddling, Human Doctor (Doctor Who), Human Master (Doctor Who), Humor, Idiots in Love, Light Angst, Other, POV The Doctor (Doctor Who), POV The Master (Doctor Who), Post-Canon, Post-Episode: s12e10 The Timeless Children, Russian Translation Available, Slow Burn, The Doctor and The Master are Stuck on Earth, Translation Available, human disasters, immortal idiots
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-03-07
Updated: 2020-08-10
Packaged: 2021-03-01 00:21:06
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 13
Words: 47,222
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23056150
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/starknight/pseuds/starknight
Summary: “Let’s think,” says the Doctor. “We’ve been transported somewhere. How? Why?”The Master gives her a scathing look. “I’m not going to brainstorm with you.”“Shut up, I’m monologuing. It didn’t feel like any sort of technology I know… Which means it’s new. Which means it’s dangerous. And it leads to Earth. Which means…”“The Doctor is off on a mission to save the day again, whoopee.”“Whichmeans,”she snaps, “The Doctor is pissed, human, and needs a nap. God, how do they manage? I’m knackered.”Or: the story of two Time Lords, stuck in human bodies, stuck on Earth, stuck with each other.
Relationships: The Doctor/The Master (Doctor Who), Thirteenth Doctor/The Master (Dhawan)
Comments: 282
Kudos: 240





	1. However Hateful

**Author's Note:**

> _spoiler warning for all of season 12 (including finale)_  
>  also this would be rated gen except they swear because I need an outlet
> 
> *insert obligatory enemies to lovers slow burn 60k+ meme here*
> 
> This isn't going to be super plot heavy, it's just a bit of fun with their dynamic and slow burn and also the Dumb Immortals Not Knowing How To Human trope. Let me know if you like it in comments or kudos 💖💖💖
> 
> [now with (ongoing) translation in Russian!](https://ficbook.net/readfic/9511796) thank you very much to Alnairy for working on this!

“Come on, come on, come on!”

The Doctor can’t hear her thoughts over the Master’s yelling. Her hand shakes, her thumb inching closer, just one flinch would do it now and yet -

She can’t.

“For just a moment there, I thought… maybe.” He makes an attempt at a grin, but she can see the tears lining his cheeks. He turns away, paces, turns back. “Oh, Doctor. The universe will suffer for your weakness, I’ll make sure of it.”

“Oh, shut it.” 

It’s easier, in moments like these, to fall back to their old ways. Posturing and grandiose. It’s what the Time Lords trained them to be. All the same, the Doctor wishes he wouldn’t. 

The Master raises his eyebrows, and holds his hand out. What the hell is that for? She frowns, walks forwards, and holds out her own hand cautiously.

“Not - not  _ that _ one, I meant - you know - the death particle thingy,” the Master huffs. 

“Tough,” she says, and takes his hand. She likes being taller than him, even if it is only because of the steps. “I just realised we don’t need it.”

The Master presses his lips together, angry in the way he always is when he can’t predict her. He tries to pull his hand out of her grip, but she holds tight.

“And are you going to enlighten me as to why that is?”

She smirks. “I’m going to annoy you to death instead.”

And for some completely stupid and unknowable reason, that’s the moment time chooses to uproot them, to take them and hurl them headfirst through space, going, going, going…

Gone.

The Doctor’s familiar enough with a late night out that she knows the feel of waking up on damp morning grass quite intimately. This isn’t the cuddly kind, though, not even when she rolls over and tries to snuggle into it. It’s scratchy and harsh. 

_ Just because you need more water doesn’t mean you need to take it out on the rest of us, _ she tells the yellow-brown blades.  _ Pricks. _

“Doctor? Doctor!”

“Wha- ?” she manages to get out before he’s there, flipping her onto her back and grabbing the front of her coat.

“What did you do, Doctor?” the Master demands.

“I don’t know what you’re -”

“Don’t  _ lie _ to me!  _ Tell me!”  _ He’s shaking, his hands pale-tight on her coat. She hates seeing him like this, and she knows he hates having to show it to even more.

“I didn’t do anything!” she insists, mostly because she didn’t. “Where are we?”

The Master lets out a yell of frustration and drops her back onto the grass. He stalks off, wind whipping his hair. It would be wonderfully majestic if he’d get rid of his sulky expression.

“No, seriously, where…” she mutters to herself, scanning her surroundings. Grass, more grass, even more grass, this is seriously a  _ lot  _ of grass for one area. Then she sees the football goalpost, and it makes more sense.  _ Why is it always Britain? _

The Master, who is halfway to the goal, turns around and begins stomping his way back towards her. He’s got his hands in his coat pockets. The Doctor pushes herself up and does her best to get the sticky grass blades (they are  _ seriously  _ out to get her) off her bum. She feels strange. Lopsided somehow.

“If this is your idea of a joke, it’s not funny,” the Master yells, once he’s within yelling distance. 

“I told you,” the Doctor says, folding her arms, “I haven’t got a clue what’s going on. This’d better not be one of  _ your  _ things.”

“My things? Does this  _ look  _ like one of my things?” He spreads his arms out to indicate the field. “My things are death and drama! This is just—grass and boredom!” 

And if it is the Master, she has to admit, it’s not his usual style at all. He likes to surprise her, and it’s possible this could all be part of some elaborate reveal, but… maybe. Maybe he doesn’t know what’s going on either.

Then something suddenly becomes very apparent to her. It’s the lopsided feeling, all the brains she doesn’t have packed into her head, the faint whine in her ears of panic that in a Time Lord’s body would sound like one of those cool New York police sirens.

But she’s not in a Time Lord’s body. No funky sirens sound. No second heart to keep her balanced. Just a ringing, a humming that builds in a crescendo and threatens to overwhelm her as the truth comes crashing home.

“I’m human,” says the Master.

“Snap,” says the Doctor.

They stare at each other, incredulity and horror and confusion that doesn’t need to be voiced bouncing between them. It’s a moment as tense as a wire.

Then it snaps, and the Doctor bursts out laughing.

“I knew it!” the Master says, pointing at her. “I knew you did this! You thought it would be so funny, didn’t you? A tiny little human heart, a tiny little human life. A fitting punishment.”

The Doctor barely hears him in between her snorts, huffs, and general noises of amusement. It’s too much, and it’s barely funny enough to tip her over the edge, but it’s better than crying. 

“Look at me!” he demands. “Tell me it was you!”

“It,” she wheezes, “wasn’t!”

“Then why are you laughing at me?” 

She looks up to see the stupidest puppy dog eyes she’s ever seen on anyone. His new face does it well, she’ll admit, floppy fringe in front of his deep brown eyes. It kills her laughter, anyway, and she sighs.

“I’m not laughing at you. It’s just—this is ridiculous. And if I don’t laugh, I’ll…”

“Cry?” he suggests. They’re both still sporting tear tracks from nearly ending Gallifrey for the second time.

“Punch you in the face, I was thinking.”

The Master scoffs. “And diminish my unending beauty? You wouldn’t.”

She rolls her eyes, but doesn’t deny it. She learnt a long time ago that the Master’s vanity was more immortal than any Timeless Child nonsense.

“Let’s think,” she says instead. “We’ve been transported somewhere. How? Why?”

The Master gives her a scathing look. “I’m not going to brainstorm with you.”

“Shut up, I’m monologuing. It didn’t feel like any sort of technology I know… Which means it’s new. Which means it could be dangerous. And it leads to Earth. Which means…”

“The Doctor is off on a mission to save the day again, whoopee.”

“Which  _ means,” _ she snaps, “The Doctor is pissed, human, and needs a nap. God, how do they manage? I’m knackered.”

“Well, you can stay here and sleep. I’m going to rob a money building and get some - what do humans eat?”

“Chips, mostly. And biscuits.”

“No wonder they die so young.”

“Oy,” the Doctor growls.

“Oh, I’m sorry, is it too soon? Don’t worry, Doctor, I’m sure your little friends are alright.” He bares his teeth. A challenge, one that she’s too tired to accept.

“Oh, piss off,” she says. “Anyway, what I was trying to say before you interrupted -”

“So sorry,” the Master interrupts again, smiling sweetly.

“- I hate you  _ so much.  _ What I was  _ saying _ is that someone put us here on purpose. Someone who knows you and me. Someone who knows the history of the Time Lords, then.”

“It’s a punishment,” says the Master. “It’s exactly Rassilon’s style, that bastard, I knew he wasn’t really dead -”

“Let’s not jump to conclusions,” the Doctor sighs. “There’s a lot of people pissed off at the Time Lords, and by extension, us. It could be anyone.”

“It’s Rassilon,” the Master insists.

“I’m ninety percent sure you’re wrong, but if that’s what you want to believe, fine by me. Whoever it is, I’m hoping they’ve put us in the right time-stream to find my fam. It looks like Britain, at least, and it looks twenty-first century ish… Not that football fields ever changed much. Did they? Eh, we’ll find out.”

The Master steps closer. “I don’t want to find out. I don’t want to be human long enough to find out.”

“I actually got that, but you don’t have a choice. Come on.”

“So you’re just—accepting it and moving on? Going to find your ‘fam’?” He says the word scathingly, making little quotation marks in the air with his hands.

“Yeah,” says the Doctor. “Problem?”

“Do you even know where we are?”

“Nah. You coming?”

“No!” the Master exclaims. “No, I’m not! We’re  _ human.  _ We could die if we - if we - you know, blink too hard or something. And how will you find them? The universe won’t rearrange itself around you anymore. Not while you’re mortal.”

“I’ve always been mortal,” she says, but a little trail of unease is finding its way through her. She’s always felt so blessed to have regeneration - mostly because she would have died thirteen times by now otherwise - and the danger of not having it hasn’t sunk in properly yet.

The Master’s watching her. Too closely.

“My fam never let it stop them,” she says, drawing herself up, “and neither will I.”

Then the Master hums thoughtfully, in that would-be-condescending tone, and she knows she’s not going to like what comes next.

“You know, I’ve been stranded on earth before,” he says. “Not human, but still. It’s not impossible to work your way up the ranks.”

The Doctor, who has just about run out of her daily supply of Tolerating-The-Master-Juice, asks, “Can you not be plotting something evil for two minutes? That’s all I need, just a breather every now and then.”

He snorts. “Plotting? How come when I do it, it’s plotting, but when you do it, it’s ‘planning’?”

“Because planning isn’t trying to hurt -”

“That isn’t my goal. To hurt everyone else. You should know that by now, Doctor.”

She clenches her fists and takes a deep breath, in and out. When she’s sure she won’t accidentally punch him in the face anymore, she asks the question.

“Then what is it?”

“To make myself better.”

“Better?”

“Alright, alright, to make myself a dictator with power over everything in the universe.”

“That’s not better.” It’s one of the first things she says that causes a visible tremor in this regeneration’s face.

“It will be. You’ll see.” He smiles a smile that’s all for him and leaves nothing for her. She’s so tired.

“I won’t,” she says, because she has to. He ignores it.

“First stop, a money building. Do you have a gun? Whoever zapped us here conveniently emptied my pockets.”

Not that she would ever have a gun, but it prompts her to feel around her own pockets. She feels the edge of her psychic paper, but apart from that, nothing.

“Mine too.” Then her brain catches up to what the Master was saying. “Wait, are you going to rob a -”

“No rest for the wicked,” he grins. “How’s that for human slang? I do like that one.” With a smug little wave, he starts walking away from her, towards a road that runs past the field.

She grits her teeth and follows.

“I’m not letting you go around unsupervised,” she yells when he starts to run.

His only response is to laugh and run faster. Well, two can play at that game. 

Football fields are  _ big. _ They’re both running considerably slower by the time they reach the road, and the Doctor is uncomfortably aware that her coat armpits are sticky with sweat.

“Ugh,” the Master gasps, and falls to the ground, one hand over his face. “I’ll never walk again.”

“Dramatic sod,” she manages.

They gasp for breath together for a while, an unspoken truce forming as they realise the limitations of these flimsy human bodies. Their usual warmup races won’t be happening this time.

The Doctor looks up to see a car. She’s quick to wave it over, both arms circling wide in the air.

“Is he alright?” asks the driver, having pulled over and lowered her window, looking at the Master.

“He’s fine,” the Doctor says. “In fact, we can just leave him -”

“She’s joking,” says the Master, pushing himself to his feet and offering his most charming smile to the driver. “Obviously.”

The driver smiles uncertainly. “Do you want a lift into town?”

“Yes,” says the Master, at the exact same time as the Doctor says, “No.”

They stare at each other.

“Ugh,” says the Doctor, “Fine.”

“She’s just nervous,” the Master says to the driver as they get into the back seat. “It’s my first time meeting her friends today.” He nudges her with an elbow, and it takes everything she has in her not to smash her elbow into his ribs.

She can do better anyway.

“Don’t mind him,” she says, leaning forwards to peer around the front passenger seat. “He’s nervous about telling them.”

“Telling them what?” asks the driver, who doesn’t look like she really wants to know.

“We’re engaged!” she says. She looks over at the Master, who squints at her in confusion.

_ Engaged in what? _ he mouths silently.

“Oh, um, congratulations,” says the woman. “I’m just going to put on some music.”

“Hang on,” says the Doctor. “Sorry if it’s rude, but are you Australian?”

The woman gives her an odd look. “Yeah, I am. Why?”

“If you don’t mind me asking, what brought you all the way over here?”

The woman opens her mouth and closes it again, failing to reply.

“Doctor,” the Master stage-whispers.

“Shut up.”

“Doctor!”

She lets herself be pulled back into her seat. 

“What is it?” she asks.

“We’re in Australia,” he says, pointing outside. Sure enough, the sun is streaming down from a blue sky, the dirt by the road is orange, and the woman in the front seat…

“Oh! You’re Australian!” the Doctor blurts.

“Yeah,” says the driver, and turns up the radio.

The rest of the ride passes by to a background of unmemorable pop songs.

“Thanks for the lift!” the Doctor yells as their driver speeds away. They’ve been dropped in the middle of the town, in the middle of a little garden strip with a fountain complete with cherubs.

_ I never can resist a good fountain, _ she thinks, and sticks her hand into the water, then brings a finger to her mouth to sample. 

But it only tastes of concrete and dirt.

“Human tongues are useless,” she mutters, trying to spit out the foul taste. But she freezes in the middle of her efforts.  _ Shit. _

“Master?” she calls. “Where are you?”

He’s nowhere to be seen.

“Here, Master. Here, boy.”

He fails to appear.  _ Worth a try. _

Then she sees a building across the road that looks very much like a bank. She swears under her breath (no companions, no filter) and sprints towards the sound. A few cars honk at her as she throws herself in their way, but they stop anyway.

“He doesn’t mean it!” she gasps as soon as she gets into the bank. She halts.

The Master is in line, his arms crossed and an eye twitching. He’s not trying to kill anyone, he hasn’t found a weapon to threaten people with, and he’s not even trying to push in front of the little old man waiting before him.

The Doctor joins him in line, taking his forearm with her hand and murmuring into his ear, “What are you playing at?”

He raises his head, pointing his chin out in a display of mock-benevolence. 

“I’m waiting for my money.”

She looks at the tellers behind their desks. They’re all dealing with customers, talking in that polite customer service voice, and indeed, some of said customers are being given cash.

“I don’t think they just hand it out,” she says, but she’s not sure. Has earth, perhaps, got with the times since she was last here? Maybe it’ll be easy for them to get money. Some kind of living stipend. 

“Watch me,” says the Master, grinning evilly. A teller comes free and waves him over. He goes with a wink at the Doctor, and she follows him, sighing through her nostrils.

“Hello, how may I help you today?” the man behind the till asks. He has an excellent red vest with a little nameplate pinned on it. His name is Ryan. 

The Doctor tries not to let that one sting.

“Hello,” says the Master sweetly. “Could you please give me some money?”

“Er, do you want to take some cash out?”

“Yes, exactly.”

“Alright. Do you have your card on you?”

“No, but that won’t be a problem, will it?” The Master leans his elbows on the counter, coming close to the plastic panel separating them from the teller.

The Doctor rolls her eyes.

“No, sir, if you could just give me your full name, date of birth, and your driver’s licence or passport.”

The Master sighs. “Oh, no, I left it all at home. Won’t you take pity on me?”

The teller looks up at them properly for the first time. “What?”

“I just want enough to live,” says the Master, his voice cracking. “My kids, they’re starving, Ryan. Please.” He wipes the single tear making its way down his cheek. It’s an impressive performance.

Ryan, though, picks up the phone and asks, “Security?”

“Well, that was a waste of time,” says the Master, kicking moodily at a paper cup on the ground.

The Doctor feels mostly relieved, but also shaken. The teller hadn’t listened to them at all, and even if they were lying, well, what if they weren’t? What if some poor human went into the bank as a last hope and got escorted out by security like that?

She feels empty and hollow inside.

“Me too,” says the Master, putting a hand over his stomach. “I think… I’m hungry.”

The Doctor can’t help flinching.  _ I am so hungry. Plates of meat and flesh and grease and juice and - _

“Same,” she says, pushing the memory away. And it’s true. That empty feeling starts to squirm inside her, her stomach rumbling in earnest. “Ow. Does it always feel like this?”

“I’ve never actually been a human before,” says the Master, “So I wouldn’t know.”

They look around at the various shops surrounding them.

“Chips?” asks the Doctor.

“If we must,” replies the Master in a resigned tone.

They eat three bowls of chips between them, sitting in stools at tall tables in a slightly dingy pub. 

The Doctor starts off eating like a normal person, one chip in one hand at a time, but it soon becomes apparent that she’ll get far less than half that way. The Master uses both hands, taking a handful in each, and crams them into his mouth. So she copies him.

After the third bowl, she sucks her fingers clean one by one. The Master’s watching her when she looks up.

“What?” she demands.

He stammers for a moment, then shakes his head. “I, um, uh, nothing.”

“Let’s go, then,” she says. 

They get up and make their way out. It’s dark and cold outside. The Doctor shivers in her thin coat, looking around, when the pub door swings open and their waitress appears looking murderous.

“You need to pay!” she exclaims. 

“What?” say the Doctor and Master in unison.

“You have to  _ pay _ for food here?” the Master asks incredulously. The Doctor wonders if she should have known that. Should she? But the humans who gave her food never asked her to pay. And what sort of monsters charged for basic rights like that?

“I’ll call security if you don’t come inside,” the waitress says, pulling out her phone.

“Vintage,” says the Doctor approvingly, pointing at her flip phone.

The waitress looks at her phone, then back at them.

“This thing can get  _ internet,” _ she says. “Isn’t it incredible?” Then she dials and puts her phone to her ear.

The Doctor looks at the Master, and he looks back at her.

“Are you thinking what I’m thinking?” she whispers.

One corner of his mouth tugs up in a grin. “Thought you’d never ask.”

She shouldn’t, she knows she shouldn’t, it’ll be nothing but trouble, but she takes his hand and pulls him down the street as they run. The waitress is shouting after them, but she doesn’t follow and they duck down a side street, then another, and another, until the Master yanks her into a tiny alley underneath a fire escape.

She skids to a halt, breathing hard, suddenly very aware of the Master’s face even in the dim light. He’s still smiling, and she can’t help but smile back. He laughs, and she laughs, and it’s the least evil moment she’s felt in him for a while. But he’s watching her too closely and she suddenly regrets everything she’s been encouraging, because underneath the new face is the same broken soul, the same shards that cut her when she gets too close.

She pulls her hand away and looks down, tucking her hair behind her ear awkwardly.

“We shouldn’t do that again,” she says, turning away and walking back into the street. “It wasn’t fair.”

“Oh, come on. How were we supposed to know it cost money to eat? And besides, it’ll be the bastard who owns the pub and underpays the staff who loses out. Aren’t you supposed to be on the side of the underdogs?”

She shrugs. “Maybe the bastard who owns the pub actually has a very tough life and the pub profits pay for his husband’s treatments and the loss we gave them will mean he dies and his children get depressed and -”

“Aren’t you sick of pretending to be better than me all the time?” the Master interrupts. “You know you’re supposed to take action based on what you think, not justify what you did based on what sounds good.”

“Shut up,” she says, starting to feel hot even in the chill night air. “Aren’t you sick of trying to get a rise out of me?”

“Never.” He tilts his head to the side. “But that’s why you love me.”

She lets out a groan of frustration and puts her hands over her face.

“Can you just not be yourself for a while? And stay out of trouble?”

He puts a hand on his chin, deliberating, and then smiles a wide and annoying smile at her.

“Nope. You’d better keep an eye on me, or else who knows how many chips I’ll steal.”

“I don’t care if you steal chips. Can you just promise me you won’t hurt anyone?” 

She looks at him, properly this time, and she sees the answer before he gives it. He’s not going to make it that easy for her.

“Fine.  _ Fine.  _ Come on.”

It goes without saying that the Doctor’s used to travelling in foreign cities. But there’s something different about this time, and it’s not just because the Master’s with her. It’s a combination of mortality, mortal needs, and all the mistakes she’s been making recently. It makes all the buildings feel hostile, and she avoids eye contact with any passers-by.

They wander the streets for a while, or more accurately, the Doctor stalks the streets with the Master wandering behind her. He doesn’t speak, but he does chuckle under his breath sometimes, and it makes her itch with irritation.

She needs to think. The flip phone - well, it seems like the timestream isn’t exactly what she thought. She wonders where they are - 2005? 2006? That’s only fifteen years to wait, maximum. Then she can get her TARDIS back and sort out this mess. And figure out how to get her Time Lord body back.

Her feet start to hurt. Can she do fifteen years of this? Really? And that’s not to mention the eternally annoying arch-nemesis along for the ride, who is currently humming an eighties song that the Doctor loves. It’s obnoxious, and it’s invasive, and yet the tiny sound emanating through the quiet night air isn’t something she wants to stop.

“Doctor?” the Master asks eventually.

“What?” she snaps, turning around.

He holds up his hands in mock-innocence (it’s never actual innocence).

“Are you getting tired?”

“Of course not,” she says, and turns back around. 

But now that she thinks of it, her limbs are oddly heavy. They weigh her down with resistance, inertia struggling to stop all her motion.

She’ll die before she admits that to the Master, though.

“Dooooooctoooooor,” he groans, five minutes later.  _ “I’m _ tired. I think we need to do that thing that humans do. To recharge, or something.”

She sighs heavily, as if it’s all the Master’s fault they have to stop walking, as if the fight within her wasn’t slowly winning out in favour of getting rest.

“Fine. We’ll stop and rest.”

“So how do we rest?”

The Doctor has a vague recollection of bunk beds in the TARDIS, double beds when Amy put her foot down, and triple beds whenever Captain Jack stayed.

“I think we lie down and close our eyes,” she says. “S’called sleep. It can’t be that hard if humans do it all the time.”

The Master looks down at the pavement.

“That’s disgusting, and I’m not doing it,” he says.

“Not  _ here. _ Usually they have these sort of soft table things, but they’re only in houses.”

“Let’s break in!”

She looks up at the sky, asks anyone watching to give her strength, and then promptly gets distracted by the timeless starry sky.

“Doctor?” asks the Master, nudging her. “Sleep?”

“We can sleep on the grass,” she says, looking back at him. “If that’s not too far beneath Your Highest Holiness.”

He looks at the grass (which is someone’s lawn, but surely they won’t mind), and shrugs.

“I’ll manage.”

The Doctor throws herself onto the grass, huddling in her coat for warmth. It’s not thick enough to block out the night air, though, and it’s too distracting to focus on the stars for long.

“D-D-Doctor?” asks the Master from where he’s lying next to her. “Are you c-cold?”

“N-no,” she replies through chattering teeth.

“G-good. Me n-n-neither.”

They shiver in silence for a while. The Doctor is horribly aware of the warmth he exudes next to her, just from their arms brushing, and her traitorous mortal body is demanding she get closer.

But she doesn’t want to be the first one to suggest it.

“Ugh,” the Master groans after what feels like hours of cold, “Come here, you hypocrite.”

“Asshole,” she mutters, turning to him and pressing herself into his blessed warmth. “I hate you so much.”

He wraps his arms around her, and says, “I hate you more.”

They’re quiet for a while as they warm up, and the Doctor looks back up at the stars. She wonders which constellation she’s really from. Where the portal Tecteun found her on was. If there’s anyone out there who really knows her.

The Master pushes his nose into her neck, and she flinches from the cold.

“Do you have to?”

“I’m not the one who got us stranded in human bodies,” he mumbles. She can feel his words warming her collarbone.

“Neither am I!”

“I know you’re up to something.”

“Stop using reverse psychology. I don’t fall for that anymore.”

He snorts. “Yeah, you do.”

“Shut up.”

He does, for about two seconds.

Then he says, “I’m onto you.”

“What now?”

“You’re only quiet when you’re thinking of a plot.”

“You caught me. I’m plotting to kill you. I’m only keeping you alive for thermal purposes. I’m going to sneak off in the middle of the night, and leave you to freeze, and steal a heater from a shop that has heaters, and then I’ll be warm forever without you.” Her face is cold, so she pushes her cheek against his shoulder. Hatefully.

“Me too,” he mumbles, but his voice is faint, and when she doesn’t reply, his breathing deepens and steadies into a sleep-soft rhythm.

She tries not to let the love-hate ache settle in her heart, but it’s impossible with her oldest and bestest frenemy snuggled up to her. 

Her last thought before she falls asleep is one of gratitude for the warmth.

And the company.

However hateful.


	2. Healthy Homes

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “Don’t you want me to get poisoned?” the Doctor asks sweetly. “Isn’t it nice of you, to care so much about -”  
> “I’m not _nice,_ ” snarls the Master, and grabs her coat, pinning her against the sleepout wall. “I’m never nice. I will not have you sullying my evil name, Doctor.”  
>  _Is it bad that I’m enjoying this?_ she wonders. The brick is rough on her shoulders, but his hands are warm and his face is close and her stomach is doing something strange.  
> “Right,” she says, “Very convincing.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you to everyone who left comments and kudos on chapter 1, this update definitely wouldn't have been as fast without them! Also, a disclaimer that I'm from New Zealand, not Australia. A lot of the slang is the same, but if there are any aussies out there who spot a mistake, do let me know.
> 
> Enjoy! ♥

The Doctor wakes up with a jolt. There’s a roaring coming from her left, something huge shaking the ground beneath her, and she springs to her feet, a hand in her pocket desperately searching for her sonic. She doesn’t quite know what to do when she doesn’t feel the familiar metal against her fingers, so she holds her hands out in what she hopes is an intimidating pose.

Then her eyes adjust.

“Oh,” she says. “Just a rubbish truck, then.”

A burly man is standing with two rubbish bags in hand, watching her. She quickly drops her hands, giving an awkward little wave. He chuckles, lobs the bags into the truck, then swings himself up onto the back of it. 

As the truck drives off, a loud snore from the Master makes the Doctor look down. He’s sprawled over the grass, face pushed into a cowslip, completely out to it.

“Oy,” she says, and kicks him.

He grunts, but continues to sleep.

She kicks him again, hard.

In a flash, his eyes are open and he’s sitting up. 

“Doctor!” he yells, looking around, wild-eyed.

She kneels down next to him, and says, “Um. Yeah?”

He grabs her by the shoulders. He’s breathing hard.

“Theta?” he asks.

Her childhood name hits her right in the gut. She’s not prepared for it, because how could she ever be? It’s red grass and sunrise mountains and a glass dome catching the light, his tiny hand in her tiny hand, freedom and cages and history.

She lets out a weird sort of  _ euuuraargh  _ sound. It’s the best she can do under the circumstances.

“Theta Sigma,” says the Master, and puts a hand on her cheek.

She tries to say something, and it comes out as a harsh choking sound, so she clears her throat and tries again.

“Um, what?”

He seems to realise what he’s doing, a little more sense flooding into his eyes. He drops his hand off her cheek like it’s burning, shakes his head, pushes himself away. They stay like that, her kneeling and confused, him sitting and trembling a metre away, for a beat.

Then he looks back at her, and the fight’s back in his gaze.

“Did you  _ kick  _ me?”

The Doctor tries not to let her relief show. She knows hostility. She can deal with hostility.

“I thought you might be dead,” she retorts. “I was only checking.”

“I wouldn’t make it that easy for you.” The Master grins at her.

“You never do,” she mutters under her breath. The Master gets up, and without thinking, she takes his hand when he offers it and lets him pull her to her feet.

“Oy!” yells a gruff female voice. The Doctor whips around to see a grizzled woman standing on the deck of the nearest house. The house whose lawn they’re currently standing on.

“Hello!” the Doctor calls cheerily, trying out a wave.

“What’re ya doing on my property?” the woman demands in a heavy Australian accent.

“Terribly sorry,” says the Doctor, “We were just, er, having a look at your lovely… grass.”

She indicates the yellowed, dried-out garden around them. The woman raises a greyed eyebrow.

“You’d betta come inside,” she says. “Have some brekky.”

“Some what?” asks the Master.

“Brekky, ya know?”

“Er,” says the Doctor, who most certainly does  _ not  _ know, but the woman has disappeared inside and it seems rude to do anything but follow. 

She and the Master duck inside the little house. The couches are all covered with colourful and holey woollen blankets, and above the little box TV there’s a decorative fish on a panel. The woman is bustling about in the kitchen.

“Haven’t ya got a place ta kip?” she asks.

“Not as such,” says the Doctor. “Not yet. I hope you don’t mind us using your lawn, but it was just sort of there.”

“No worries,” says the woman, pulling boxes out of a cupboard. “What’s ya name?”

“I’m the Doctor.”

“The Doctor, ay? I think I heard of ya.”

That’s news. “Oh, um… how?”

“Well, I was talking ta Bernie, and he was talking ta Charlotte, who was talking ta Malti, whose niece was playing guard for ya in the outback. Bell Browning. Shame. Sweet kid.”

The usual weight of responsibility settles on the Doctor’s shoulders, and she goes to say something, but the Master gets there first.

“She was,” he says. “I’m sorry we lost her.”

The Doctor tries not to let her eyes bulge out of her sockets. She can’t help sneaking a glance at the Master. He’s running a hand over the blanket on the back of the couch, and she can’t read his expression.

“And what’s your name?” Their host sets out bowls and milk on the counter.

“I’m the Master.”

“They sound like gang names, ay?”

The Doctor laughs, but the Master doesn’t.

“I’m Liz. And here’s brekky. Hope ya like skippies and milk.” Liz sits on one side of the counter and indicates the two seats on the other side. The Doctor and the Master sit. 

She leans across to him to whisper, “What’s a skippy?”

“How would I know?” he whispers back.

“You lived in Australia for years!”

“But I didn’t  _ eat _ anything, did I?”

The Doctor looks up to see Liz watching them, a faint smile spreading across her face.

“They’re just cornflakes,” says Liz. She pours some in her bowl, then tops them with milk.

The Doctor and the Master copy her carefully, and eat with the spoons provided. The cereal isn’t bad, and it’s actually somewhat of a relief not to be able to taste the emotional state of the cow from its milk with her human tongue. The Doctor tries not to splatter milk over the counter, but it goes about as well as expected. Liz gives her a paper towel. And another.

“If ya need a place ta stay, I’ve got a granny flat out the back,” says Liz once they’re done. “It’s a tiny wee thing, but it’s better than the lawn.”

“Oh, um,” says the Doctor, feeling extremely awkward, “That’s very nice of you, but…”

She’s stayed in plenty of people’s houses before, but not as an arrangement, and not when she needed to sleep and eat and do all sorts of embarrassing human things.

“I only use it when I have rellies over. Take the key, and think about it, a’ight?”

Liz roots around in her pocket, then produces a small silver key. She presses it into the Doctor’s hand.

“Thank you,” says the Doctor, overwhelmed by the easy kindness with which this stranger has treated them. “If you want us to - I don’t know - fight anyone for you, we will.”

Liz laughs, a wonderful deep, husky sound.

“I’ll let ya know.”

“Please do,” says the Master, sounding far too eager.

Liz leaves them at the sleepout door, looking at her watch and saying something about work. It sounds boring, so the Doctor only half-listens, and then she’s gone.

The Doctor looks down at the key in her hand. She hasn’t been given one of these since… Well, she’s never been given one of these. She stole the TARDIS key, and that was her first home. Her only home. 

“Look, if you’re going to be all sentimental about it,” huffs the Master, grabbing the key and fitting it into the lock. It’s a thin glass door, fitting into a small yellow brick sleepout.

She follows the Master inside. It’s all one room, which is good, because walls would seriously take away from the real estate of the floor space. It’s tiny. There’s a double bed on the far side of the room with a faded pink duvet and worn pillows. It smells of dust and disuse, but not in the worst way. There’s a wee table that’s barely big enough to fit the two chairs tucked underneath it, then a short counter with a rusty sink, fridge, and the smallest oven she’s ever seen.

“What do we need all this for?” the Master asks, running a hand over the table and looking at the kitchen. “A personal lab? Maybe humans aren’t so bad.”

“I think it’s for eating,” says the Doctor. “This is a fridge, and it’s hot - no, cool. Definitely cool.” And she definitely knew that before she stuck her hand in it. 

“And that?” The Master points at the oven.

“It’s hot,” she says. “For… hot things.”

“Ah. I see.”

The Doctor wishes she’d listened a bit more to her human companions, but in fairness, she didn’t know she was going to be tested on all this. And being tested doesn’t make it any less dull. 

“Uh,” says the Master, “Doctor?”

“I’m literally the only one here, and I’m right next to you. You don’t have to say my name to get my attention.” 

“But I like to say it,” he says, which throws her off guard for a moment. “Anyway, I think I have a…  _ human _ problem.” The word  _ human  _ makes his lip curl like he’s smelt something bad.

“What is it?” she asks.

“It’s like an itch, but it’s all watery and worse. And it’s coming from here.” He points to his crotch. “How do I turn it off?”

The Doctor racks her brains, though she shouldn’t. It’d serve the Master right if she didn’t help him.

“Oh!” she exclaims. “You need to take a piss!”

It’s not the sort of phrase she ever thought she’d say with such enthusiasm, and it’s clear the Master has no idea what she’s on about.

“A piss?”

“Yeah, because when humans drink, it has to come out somewhere, and it comes out of - well, you know - there.” She waves in the general direction of his crotch. 

He looks down at it, his expression equal parts terrified and furious.

“Traitorous mortal form,” he growls. “So do I just -”

“Not  _ here _ . I’m sure there’s a toilet somewhere, that’s where all the humans do it. They get very cross when I don’t mark the way properly in the TARDIS, bless their wee bladders.”

She slides back a previously unnoticed door next to the bed to reveal a little bathroom. There’s a sink, and a bath (she has to take a moment to tell her mind sternly not to obsess over the possibility of bubbles), but no toilet.

“Which one is it?” the Master pants, hopping from foot to foot.

“It’s not here,” she says, puzzled. “Maybe there’s another door on the outside.”

The Master lets out a stream of the worst Gallifreyan swears known to Time Lords, and so the Doctor, picking up on the urgency, runs outside and around to the back of the sleepout. What she sees could easily belong in a horror film.

It’s a tiny thing built a few metres back from the main building. It looks to be made out of the same yellow-orange brick, but it’s hard to tell; it’s stained brown-black.. The door hangs open, if you can call five planks sticking out at various angles a door. The pros: there’s a toilet inside. The cons: there’s what sound like a million flies in the toilet, and a stench that makes the Doctor have to cover her nose.

“What. Is.  _ That,”  _ the Master says flatly. “No way am I going in there. No way.”

“You’d really better go,” says the Doctor, “Before you get it all over yourself.”

She wouldn’t wish that toilet on her worst enemy, and it makes her feel evil. But go inside the Master does, screwing up his face and holding a hand over his nose.

“If I die here, it’s your fault,” he whispers dramatically before closing the door.

She sighs deeply. It’s tempting to walk away, to abandon him to the horrors within, but she stands there and waits.

“Er,” comes his voice, more high-pitched than usual, “What do I do now?”

“It’s only machinery, can’t you figure it out?”

“There’s no instructions!” 

“You take out your, er, your thing.”

“Oh,” says the Master, and then, “Eurgh.”

“It’s got a handle, though,” says the Doctor, “Try to look on the bright side.”

There’s a sigh and a rustling, and then a faint sound of liquid hitting earth.

“Doctor! Doctor! I’m doing it!” 

There’s no one around to see her, so she lets herself smile at that.

“Well done,” she says. “Wasn’t so hard, was it?”

“Ooh, I can aim, and -  _ MOTHER OF THE SPACE-TIME CONTINUUM!” _

“What is it?”

“There’s a bloody giant spider!”

“Aww, can I see?”

The Master emerges, looking traumatized.

“I will never be the same,” he tells her in the same dramatic whisper. “Though my body goes on, my life ended here today.”

“Shove over,” says the Doctor, who would risk anything for a new friend. “Where’s Sonya?”

“You haven’t even seen it yet, and you’ve  _ named  _ -”

But the Doctor pays him no mind, pushing her way into the tiny toilet-shack. She’s a splendid spider, curling her way down from the top of the roof. She’s almost half the size of the Doctor’s hand.

“Hello, Sonya,” she croons, holding out said hand.

“No, no, bad Doctor!” The Master grabs her and pulls her out of the toilet, slapping her hand down. “It could be poisonous!”

“So?”

“You could get poisoned!”

“... So?”

She looked at her hand, which the Master is still holding. He drops it like it’s flaming hot.

“So nothing,” he huffs, and turns away.

The Doctor’s not going to let him get away with it that easily, though, and she catches up with him in three strides.

“Don’t you want me to get poisoned?” she asks sweetly. “Isn’t it nice of you, to  _ care _ so much about -”

“I’m not  _ nice,” _ he snarls, and grabs her coat, pinning her against the sleepout wall. “I’m never  _ nice. _ I will not have you sullying my evil name, Doctor.” 

_ Is it bad that I’m enjoying this? _ she wonders. The brick is rough on her shoulders, but his hands are warm and his face is close and her stomach is doing something strange.

“Right,” she says, “Very convincing.”

He snarls again, wordlessly, and lets her go, stalking into the sleepout. She stays resting against the wall for a few moments, until she can’t feel the Master’s warm hands on her shoulders anymore. Damn him and his toasty warm hands.

She debates leaving him alone, but her human form has done nothing to keep the ever-encroaching boredom at bay, and after exactly four seconds, she follows him inside.

The Doctor’s never been good at being bored. The Master doesn’t know how he forgot that. You forget a lot of things, when you don’t see someone for centuries. 

You also get good at being bored.

So he sits at the tiny table, drumming his hands over the wood, and he watches the Doctor as she self-destructs in the tiny space.

“It’s a comfy bed,” she says, flinging herself onto it. “Very nice and squashy. Smells a bit odd, though. The whole place does. Does it smell odd to you?”

Without waiting for an answer, she bounces up and begins a circuit of the room, tracing her hand over the wall. 

“It’s about as big as Yaz’s flat,” she says, “Smaller than Ryan’s place. Bigger than Graham’s. They told me the house prices are shocking in Sheffield, actually. I wonder what they’re like in this part of Australia.”

The Master continues tapping his fingers, staring into a corner of the room. He doesn’t hear the drums anymore, but he still likes to tap out the rhythm.

The Doctor vanishes into the strange room with the white things and no toilet, and within thirty seconds, loud crashes and bangs start to sound.

“What are you doing in there?” he calls.

“Just a bit of an upgrade!” She continues to mutter to herself, but he can’t make out the words. “Is it just me, or can human teeth not cut through steel?”

The Master snorts. Just what kind of subpar species was humanity, exactly?

“Fuck!” says the Doctor. “They can’t.”

She emerges from the side room, holding up two small white pieces of tooth. 

“Oops,” she says, and then, “Think fast!”

The Master ducks just in time.

“What was that for?”

“Where to start?” She carries on with her inspection, moving to the kitchen. She opens the tall white cool box and pulls out something hard and yellow. She grins at him and sinks her remaining teeth into it.

The Master looks back at his fingers, tapping them hard on the table. He tries very hard not to pay attention as she gags and throws the yellow thing into the bin.

“These tongues are rubbish. This one only tells me that it tastes bad! Where’s the aging analysis? The emotional decomposition?”

The Master taps his fingers again.  _ One, two, three, four. _

“Master?”

He swears and almost falls out of his chair. The Doctor’s in his face, so close her nose is out of focus.

“What was that for?” he demands.

“I’m going out,” she announces, rearranging her coat as if she hasn’t had it on all this time. “To the shops.”

He frowns. “Why?”

“Cos I’m bored. Bye!”

“Wait,” he starts, getting up. “You’re going? Just like that?”

“Yeah. You’re not going to rob a bank, are you? No. Good. Brilliant. Ta-ta.”

“Of course not.” He smiles sweetly. “I wouldn’t do anything so…  _ amateur.” _

She pauses halfway out the door. He watches her chest fall in a sigh, and then she turns back and folds her arms.

“Are you going to be this annoying all the time?”

He smiles, and says nothing.

“Ugh.  _ Ugh. _ You have got to be kidding me…” Her face goes through all thirteen stages of Gallifreyan grief.

“You’re not going to let me have a moment of peace, are you?” she asks.

“Since when did you ever want peace, Doctor?”

He can see her getting worn down, see the edge of her temper beginning to grate.

“If you really want to come, I’m going now,” she says, and leaves.

He sits for a moment, debating. He hates chasing after her, hates always walking in the path she treads for him, like some kind of delirious moon in her orbit. 

But he goes after her all the same.

Despite living in the outback for years, the Master had very rarely stepped foot outside his air-conditioned TARDIS. Now he knows that was the right choice. 

“It’s a bit hot, isn’t it?” says the Doctor casually. She takes her coat off and throws it over her shoulder. She’s wearing  _ long sleeves _ underneath her t-shirt, even now, in the beating heat on the side of the street.

“A bit hot?  _ A bit hot?” _

The Master’s done his best with what he has; he’s carrying his vest and jacket, and he’s rolled up his pants, but still, it threatens to overwhelm him. It’s not just the sky that’s hot, but the concrete beneath them emanates heat as well. The liquid around his eyes feels uncomfortably warm.

“Yeah, that’s what I said. Try to keep up.”

“It’s bloody  _ boiling. _ If Rassilon threw me into a pit of lava, it’d be colder than this. I have become fire, Doctor. Fire and  _ death.” _

“Dramatic sod,” she mutters. “Do you actually know which way we should be going?”

They’ve been walking for twenty minutes.

“Don’t  _ you?” _

“Nah, I was just sort of meandering. Nice neighbourhood, this.” She stops and looks at him, a challenge in her eyes. She’s testing him.

He balls his hands into fists, and crouches down on the pavement. He hits it once, which is a mistake, because it’s really fucking hot. Then he gets up, schools his expression, and turns to her.

“No,” he says through his teeth. “I don’t know which way to go.”

She appraises him. He can’t tell if he’s failed or not. He looks back down at the pavement, where a line of ants is trailing through a mossy crack. He follows their line, all the way to a tiny puddle with a piece of paper sticking out of it.

“Doctor,” he says in a reverent tone, crouching down again. “Look at this.”

She crouches, too, her coat brushing the pavement as she leans in.

“Is that…”

“Money,” says the Master, taking the note off the ground. It’s just the corner that’s sticky, and he grabs the end of the Doctor’s coat to wipe it off.

“Oy!” She bats him away. “Use your own!”

He wrinkles his nose, but does as she says. It’s blue, with a funny picture of a man with a cowboy hat on it, and a number ten in the corner.

“It’s ten whole monies,” he says, clapping his hands excitedly. “Will that buy us a house?”

“I don’t know,” the Doctor says brightly, “Let’s find out.”

Because they’re rich now, they decide to take a bus into town.

A bus, the Master finds out, is a big square car that can fit lots of people in it. And it smells weird. And the chairs are ugly. And it’s  _ expensive. _

It’s one dollar (which the bus driver informs them is the currency here) and twenty cents, each. The Master is worried that they’ll have to settle for a tiny house with the leftover money, but he doesn’t want to walk any further, and so he lets the Doctor take the money note and pay.

“Does this go to town?” she asks the bus driver. Said bus driver is sitting behind a cage, with a little hole in it to put the money through.

The driver grunts.

“Thanks,” says the Doctor, apparently able to translate the noise, and takes the tickets.

The Master stares at the seats, all of which look equally awful. There’s a couple of elderly women nattering away close to them, someone lurking in a dark hoodie near the back, and a man desperately trying to keep his son sitting in the seat in between them.

“Go on, then,” says the Doctor, giving him a little push. He starts forward, but the bus lurches into action before they can sit, and he has to hold onto a pole nearby to keep from toppling over.

They make it eventually, though, the Master collapsing into a seat next to the window and the Doctor sitting right next to him. He doesn’t like the way the bus rumbles beneath him, like the seats are going to vibrate out of position and launch him into the sky at any moment. He grips the bottom of his seat tightly.

But the Doctor doesn’t appeared to be bothered. She’s making that scrunchy face she does, looking around the bus, eternally curious. Then she takes out the tickets and studies them.

“Huh,” she says. “January, 2005. Not a bad year. First YouTube video, the IRA declares peace, humans are starting to really think about climate change… And my personal favourite, Coldplay releases  _ Fix You. _ Have you heard it?”

The Master doesn’t know if that’s supposed to be a jab, but he doesn’t want or need to be fixed, so he just glowers.

And then it hits.

“I’m sorry,” he says, “Did you say 2005?”

She freezes mid-scrunchy face.

“Um.”

“So we’re not going to be able to change the timeline until - until -”

“Until 2020.” She scrunches her face slightly differently, in the way that he knows is trying to be an apology.

“Fifteen years.  _ Fifteen years. _ And that’s not - I’ve already lived through this once! When you left me in the forties!”

“I know.”

“Ugh. Are you sure we can’t just ask past you for help?”

“You know we can’t.” She pats him on the shoulder awkwardly. “You’re stuck with me.”

The Master’s human body must be faulty, because at that, his stomach does a little flip. The way she phrases it makes it sound like she’s not intending to leave him at any given moment, but that… that can’t be right. 

They get off the bus when the buildings begin to grow tall and thick around them. Well. Taller and thicker. The town is small, so that just means two-storey places with no gardens separating them. And it just so happens that their stop is right next to a house-selling house.

“Look at these,” says the Doctor, going to the window and running her hands over the pictures of houses. “They don’t look half bad. And this one - it says it costs three!”

“Three?” asks the Master doubtfully, who’s starting to wonder about the relative prices of bus tickets to houses. “That seems very cheap.”

“Don’t question it,” says the Doctor, “Let’s get it before anyone else does. Come on.” She pushes her way into the building without further ado.

The Master, though, hangs back to look at the house listing.

**_Wake Up To The Blue Skies Life!_ **

_ This fabulous property will leave you wondering how you could live any other way. With one master bedroom and a small adjoining study, it’s ideal for first home owners and newlyweds. A small deck offers a sunny place for eating and entertaining, while a cosy conjoined dining and living area has everything you need to stay snug in the winter months.  _

_ Price open to negotiation. _

It’s not a particularly shocking piece of advertising, but the Master can’t stop staring at it. He imagines what he and the Doctor would do with such a place. Only one office - would they share? Would they entertain each other, on the deck, or would she have human friends to come over too? Would he manage? Would she manage? Would they  _ stay snug in the winter months? _

An image of Theta as a child pops unbidden into his head. They’ve got snow messed into their hair, and their cheeks shine red and flushed.

“You coming?” the Doctor asks, popping her head around the door. “I’ve got us a meeting.”

“Yeah,” the Master says quickly, following her.

“You are aware that one would usually view the place before making an offer?” says the real estate agent, a well-groomed young man with a tiny scruff of a beard.

“Well, it was cheap,” says the Doctor. “I thought someone else might get in first if I didn’t.”

The agent gives her an odd look, and reshuffles his papers. “What kind of price are you offering, then? And I should mention, this property is open to negotiation.”

The Doctor bites her lip, concentrating.

“The place was advertised at three, which seems good already… But we need to get the bus back, and maybe some chips… So… I’ll offer you two.” She takes out the change the bus driver gave her, finds the coin with the two on it, and pushes it across the table towards the agent.

He looks at her, and at the coin. Then back at her. Then back at the coin.

“Two… hundred thousand?”

“Two.”

“I’m sorry,” says the agent, “can you clarify for me? Two what, exactly?”

“Monies,” interjects the Master helpfully.

“Two monies,” the Doctor repeats. “Take it or leave it.”

The agent, again, looks up at her, and down at the coin.

“You’re not serious,” he says. “This is - this is a joke.”

“Oh, god, is it too much?” the Doctor asks. What a nice man not to swindle her. She takes back the coin, and finds the one with one written on it instead. “One money, then.”

The agent stares at the coin.

“Er. Excuse me?” asks the Doctor. “What’s your response?”

“One money,” whispers the agent. “One money.”

“That’s our offer, yep.”

He hasn’t blinked in twenty seconds, and he looks like he’s about to have a breakdown. For the first time, the Doctor starts to have a faint inkling that she’s somehow made a massive cock-up.

“That’s one dollar,” says the agent, pointing at the coin. “One dollar.”

“Oh, yeah, right, dollars,” says the Master, “Sorry.”

“One dollar isn’t enough to -”

“So we’ll do two, then, after all,” says the Doctor, swapping the coins again. “Or even two and a  _ half. _ How about that, eh?”

The agent’s lip trembles as he watches the fifty-cent coin appear.

“I can’t do this,” he says, “Sorry. Maybe you think it’s funny, but I’d quite like to just go home now.”

And immediately that feeling hits the Doctor, the horrible twisted stomach feeling she gets whenever emotions are too much and she can’t process them and she doesn’t know how to fix it.

“Oh, um, right,” she says, taking back the money, “Sure.”

The Master, though, thumps his hand on the table. “Two and a half is more than reasonable!”

The agent stands up and tucks his papers into a folder, but a muscle in his jaw jumps.

“She’s made you an offer, and you make a counter offer! That’s how it works!” The Master is standing now too, looking moderately enraged. The Doctor just wants the angry voices to stop.

“Two dollars and fifty cents? You want me to make a counter offer on  _ two dollars fifty?  _ The listed price was three hundred thousand.  _ Three hundred thousand. _ I don’t know how you get so bad with money that you’re literally an adult shaped being trying to offer me a popsicle for a house, and I don’t particularly care, because you’re a waste of my fucking time.”

The agent, having proceeded to yell the last few words of his speech, slams the door behind him. The Doctor puts the coins back in her pocket.

“Well, that was just - we offered him two and a half whole monies!” the Master exclaims, gesturing at the slammed door. “He’s clearly a fool. The ad said  _ price open to negotiation. _ Time vortex guard duties would sort him out in no time.”

The Doctor takes a deep breath. The Master’s indignance is, of course, totally unfounded, but it does make her feel a little better.

“I think we need more money,” she says, “Like, a lot more money.”

“Yeah,” sighs the Master. “I got that too.”

“Maybe even jobs.”

“What’s a  _ job?”  _ asks the Master, and the Doctor doesn’t know how to explain humanity’s favourite form of exploitation in a way that he won’t immediately dismiss, so she doesn’t.

“I’ll show you,” is what she says instead. “Come on.”

They pass by the listing again as they leave the shop, and they both pause to look at it.

“It wouldn’t’ve been terrible,” says the Master. “With some death traps set up around it.”

“Yeah,” says the Doctor, longing for her TARDIS, for her sonic, for the things in the universe she could clearly and definitively call her own. “Not terrible.”


	3. Chicken is a Universal Space-Time Constant

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm sorry this has taken more than a week - a week per chapter is usually my golden rule, and I'm trying to stick with that, but I'm also just a small and defenseless bundle of anxiety at the moment and writing is proving a little difficult. Speaking of all that, I just want to shout out to anyone who's feeling isolated. You are not alone. If you ever want to chat, DM me on tumblr. It's a time to stick together and show our love ❤❤❤ 
> 
> I hope I can offer a little distraction from the world with this fic. Enjoy!
> 
> (content warning for implied mild sexism and racism)

They’re standing in a supermarket, watching the checkouts.

“This is a job?” asks the Master, his lip curling. “Touching vegetables unnecessarily, and, might I add, unhygienically?”

“It’s not just that,” says the Doctor, though to be honest, she’s not entirely sure how it works either. “I think they have to figure out how much the vegetables are worth.”

The Master looks at her incredulously.

“I still think charging monies for food is stupid.”

“Agreed,” says the Doctor, who’s still waiting for humanity to progress properly. “But it’s how they do it, and so we need money for food too. Are you hungry? I’m hungry.”

“So hungry,” the Master sighs. “Do humans have chicken?”

“Every planet has chicken, what sort of stupid question is - wait!”

But he’s already barged his way into the supermarket, on the hunt for a roast chicken glossy with grease. The Doctor’s stomach rumbles just thinking about it.

She finds him standing in the light of the rotisserie, his eyes reflecting the twenty chickens in front of him.

“You’ve got a point about humans, Doctor. They’re not so bad after all.”

The Master seizes a chicken and grins at her. It makes something in her bones turn around, in a good way, if rearranging anatomy is ever good. But then she notices the price tag.

“We don’t have enough money,” she points out. “Sorry.”

The Master’s expression doesn’t falter for a second.

“The Gallifrey Hot Five,” he says.

“No. No, we don’t need to  _ ste -” _

“I’m going,” the Master interrupts, waving the chicken in her face. “If you want to help, help.”

The Doctor glares at his back as he walks away. It had to be cheating to just say  _ The Gallifrey Hot Five _ and walk away. It was a band they were both in back home, and they’d never stolen  _ food _ together, but equipment, on the other hand… Time Lord society had been so stupidly bureaucratic that it was honestly much less trouble just to nick the antigrav amplifiers for a night and return them the next morning rather than filling out paperwork for five weeks.

The point is, the Doctor and the Master know how to work together to steal things. They’d tried out all the different combinations, and settled on each doing what they were best at. The Doctor does talking. The Master does crime.

“Hello.” The Doctor is at the information desk. “I’m not from round here, and I was just wondering if you might give me a bit of a run down as to the, er, happenings of the place?”

The employee in front of her looks up. There’s something dead in their eyes.

“Can I help you?” they ask, something like a smile appearing on their face. 

“I’m sure you can.” It then occurs to the Doctor to kill two birds with one stone, as it were, but without any actual graphic violence or bird killings. “You wouldn’t happen to have any job openings?”

The Master has put on his coat, despite the conditions. Underneath it he holds the chicken, which makes him look like he has a most unfashionable pot belly. He holds it awkwardly, watching the Doctor distract one of the workers.

“Nope,” says the employee. “You wouldn’t want to work here anyway. You’re old. Don’t you have a degree or something?”

“A doctorate, but never mind that. Is there anywhere else I could get a job? And my friend, too. He has a… a masters.”

The Master makes a show of looking at the brightly coloured things just before the checkouts. They look like drugs. Are they drugs? He reads ‘chewing gum’ on one of the packets, and casually slips it into his pocket. No one notices.

_ Focus, Master. The chicken. _

He waddles as elegantly as he can past the Doctor and towards the door.

“Look, do you want to buy a lotto ticket or not?” the worker sighs.

“A what?”

“A. Lotto. Ticket.”

The chicken is slipping downwards at an increasing rate. The Master can’t get a proper hold of it, the slippery little bastard. He keeps one hand planted on the chicken and uses his other to try and pull his coat around him, with limited success.

“No, thanks,” says the Doctor amiably. “What other shops are there around?”

The worker stares straight ahead, and blinks. This blink says a million words. It speaks of sleep deprivation and too many energy drinks, of an unhealthy diet on the pittance they make.

“There’s a garage across the road,” they say in a monotone. 

The chicken drops to the ground just as the Master makes it outside the supermarket. He stares at it in horror for a moment, then remembers that he’s evil, shrugs, and picks it up again.

He sits down on the steps outside the supermarket, cradling the precious, only slightly dirty chicken. He feels a tap on his shoulder, and looks around, only to hear the Doctor’s laugh from the other direction.

“Gotcha,” she says, sitting down next to him. “Did you start without me?”

“Never.” It slips out in a way that makes the Master sound a lot more caring than he really is, and the Doctor regards him with a look of suspicion.

“... Okay.” 

She reaches into the bag and rips off a leg. He follows suit, and between them they demolish the whole thing in about ten minutes. The Master’d forgotten what it was like to do this with her. They used to eat together on Gallifrey (Time Lords don’t need to, but it was a fashionable hobby for a while), having picnics on the red grass, or huddling together in a dark corner of an Academy feast.

It’s comfortable. Companionable.

Also, he has to watch the Doctor lick her fingers clean again, which makes his fuzzy little human brain short-circuit.

“Come on,” she says without pausing for a second, wiping her fingers on her pants, “There might be jobs at the garage.”

“What’s a garage?”

“That’s a really good question.”

A garage, it turns out, is like a house but for cars. It’s not immediately clear where one is supposed to walk when approaching the entrance, but the Doctor sees someone’s legs sticking out from underneath a car, and bounces up to them.

“Hello,” she says cheerfully.

A rough grunt sounds, and the man slides out, revealing blue overalls stained with engine grease and a bearded face that regards her with scrutiny.

“Need help with ya car, love?”

“Actually, I’m looking for a job. Have you got anything? And for my friend too.”

The man pushes himself up, wipes his hands on his overalls, and looks them over.

“Y’ain’t from round here, are ya?” he asks, looking at the Master.

Before he can reply, the Doctor thinks quickly and says, “Yeah, I’ve been told we have a bit of an accent.”

The man looks at her, then back at the Master, but thankfully doesn’t say anything else about it.

“You’re lucky, coming in today. Our last girl’s on baby leave, so we need someone at the phone. And I could always use a bit of help around the workshop.”

“Excellent,” says the Doctor. “I’ve got to warn you, I’ve not worked on cars for a while, but I’ll pick it up again soon.”

The man looks at her strangely. “You’ll be on the phone.”

She looks at the Master, then back at the man, then back at the Master. They both look equally perplexed.

“I’ve got mechanic experience,” she says clearly. “More than him.”

“Oy,” mutters the Master, but gives no further protest. He knows it’s true.

“Look, love, I’m in charge here, a’ight? It’ll be better with ya voice on the phone, I promise.”

She puts her hands on her hips. “Look,  _ love, _ give me a day with cars and I’ll prove you wrong.”

He sighs. “Phone duty or no job.”

“Give me an hour. One hour.”

He looks at the Master. “She any good?”

The Doctor has to bite her tongue, which apparently hurts quite a bit for humans.

“She’s the best mechanic in the world,” says the Master. “You’d be an idiot not to hire her.  _ I’ll _ do the phone, just give her a chance.”

The mechanic looks back at her. She smiles faux-sweetly.

“Fine,” he huffs. “Ya get an hour to prove ya point, and if ya do any damage, it comes out of your wages. Be here tomorrow. Seven sharp.”

She smiles properly and gives him a little salute.

“Yes, sir.”

They take the bus home again, which thankfully they have enough monies for. On the way home, the Master feels a sudden warmth and looks down to see the Doctor’s leg bumping against his.

She’s looking out the window, apparently oblivious. 

He doesn’t ask, and he tries not to think about the way it makes him feel.

This always happens when he’s around the Doctor for too long. The adrenaline dies down once he’s abandoned his evil plan for taking over the universe, and he’s left with a residual grudging respect for her. Barely grudging. You have to respect someone quite a bit to dedicate your life to hunting them down. 

And the Doctor’s always been worth it. 

That,  _ that, _ is exactly what he’s trying not to think about.

“Do you know when we need to get off?” the Doctor asks suddenly.

The Master puts his head in his hands. He takes it back, all of the respect, all of the admiration. She’s an  _ idiot. _

They get off at the next stop, after figuring out they’ve been on the bus for about ten minutes too long. It’s cooler now, but only a little bit, and it’s only the complete ease with which the Doctor settles into walking that makes the Master follow her at the same pace.

“I don’t feel so good,” the Doctor announces.

“Me neither,” says the Master, a little relieved. “Is  _ all  _ of earth this hot?”

“No, no, it’s…  _ Ugh.” _ She clutches her stomach and bends over.

“What is it?” He steps forward despite himself, reaching out a hand.

She groans. “This is it. This is how I die.”

“What’s wrong? Doctor?” He puts a hand on her back, feeling entirely too helpless.

She doesn’t respond, just breathes hard, and he’s terrified. Is her Time Lord makeup somewhere beneath there? Will it let her regenerate if she dies? Or will she just fall down on the pavement, a tiny inconsequential death on a tiny inconsequential planet in a tiny inconsequential galaxy?

Then she opens her mouth, and lets out a horrendous noise.

“Much better.”

“What was  _ that?” _

“I think it’s called a burp,” she says in a matter-of-fact tone. “Nothing to worry about.”

“But I thought you were -” 

He cuts himself off before he can embarrass himself for the second time that day. He’s not going to be accused of being  _ nice _ again, because he’s not, and he doesn’t care, because even if the Doctor was dying, he wouldn’t care. He  _ wouldn’t. _

“Come on, then.” She keeps walking, and the Master has to jog a couple of steps to catch up with her.

It’s silent, until she says, “I’m not going to die, you know. You don’t have to worry.”

He wants to deny it, but he finds he can’t. Not quite.

When they get home, the Doctor remembers to take the key out of her pocket. She fits it into the lock and turns. It makes her miss her TARDIS.

She doesn’t like thinking about her TARDIS, because then she’ll start to think about the friends she’s left behind, or left ahead, depending how you look at time, and then she’ll get sad, and she can’t be sad, not while she hasn’t got her TARDIS to hide herself in.

Instead of being sad, she runs across the room and jumps onto the bed, landing in the faceplant to end all faceplants.

“Oof,” she mumbles, her face sinking into the soft pillow.

The bed dips, and she feels a light warmth settle in as the Master flops beside her. She turns her face to the side to see large brown eyes blinking at her. Waiting. For what?

“Why are you still here?” The question’s out before she can help herself.

A little crinkle folds the Master’s forehead.

“Why wouldn’t I be?”

“Seriously?” She puts her lips together and makes a  _ brrrr _ sound. “Where to begin… Oh, yeah, two days ago you were hell bent on destroying the universe. And now you’re happy just to — follow me around?”

“Funny how that happens,” the Master murmurs. 

She doesn’t trust that voice, soft and low and caring. In her Time Lord body she’d be able to smell the imminent betrayal. 

She sits up abruptly, bouncing off the bed and looking around for something to distract her.

_ What do humans do at night?  _ They make food, she thinks, but she wouldn’t have the foggiest idea of where to start. They read books, too, and she could do that, except there aren’t any books in here.

Then she catches sight of the TV out of the corner of her eye.

“Aha,” she says, pointing at it, “You’ll do.”

“For what?” the Master asks, propping himself up on his elbows.

“Go to sleep.”

She bends down in front of the box and presses the biggest button. The screen flares to life with a faint hissing sound, but it’s all grey and buzzy with noise.

“Ah, fuck,” she mutters, and peers around the back. There’s a bunch of wires that aren’t connected, with little coloured tips. She grins and sets to work.

Ten minutes later, the screen resolution is better than any 2005 TV has the right to be, and the sound is crisp and clear. She’s put in a black plastic block (it’s been a while since she’s been in the early 2000s, but she thinks they’re called video tapes) to the grey box beneath the TV. 

“What is it with humans and their boxes?” the Doctor mutters. “Why not… Spheres, or orbs, or literally any other better shape?”

But she’s interrupted by the TV.

_ This is DVD, _ it announces.  _ And this is what happens when you watch DVD… _

There’s a series of increasingly explosive scenarios shown on the screen, which the Doctor assumes is some sort of ad for a better video technology. 

“What’s that?” asks the Master, sitting up. “Are we brainstorming how to end the world?”

The Doctor doesn’t grace him with a reply, perching on the homely couch and focussing on the screen. The ad for DVD finishes, and the sound of ticking clocks replaces it. It’s mesmerizing, even without Time Lord DNA. She feels rather than sees the Master come and sit next to her.

“What  _ is _ this?” the Master asks, once the awkward kid has been taken back to 1955 by an errant time machine.

“Er,” says the Doctor, picking up the case, “It’s called…  _ really?” _

“What sort of a name is ‘Really’?”

“No, no, I mean… oh, come  _ on. _ You make a time travel film, and you call it…”

“Call it what?”

_ “Back to the Future.” _

The Master snorts. “You’re right, that’s completely dumb. Unless they go to the future twice in this, which judging by the state of their tech, they don’t.”

“Well, I have hope,” says the Doctor, pointing her finger at the Master. “I have faith in humanity.”

By the end of the film, the Doctor no longer has faith in humanity.

“What  _ was _ that?”

“They’re your pet species! Don’t ask me!” The Master looks as horrified as she feels.

“I cannot believe how wrong they got everything… Time travel… Time travel etiquette…”

“Incest,” adds the Master helpfully.

The Doctor smacks him on the leg. 

“What? He wanted to fuck his mum! That’s screwed up!”

And she doesn’t quite know how she can defend that. Humanity, she decides, is an advanced enough species to take some responsibility. They can have  _ Back to the Future. _ She wants nothing to do with it. Nothing at all.

When she comes out of her hating-human-time-travel-movies reverie, she notices that over the course of the film, she and the Master have stretched out along the couch. Their feet are now tangled in a delightfully warm mess. It’s embarrassing that this is what her subconscious does with its free time, honestly. Would it do the same for any warm body? Is her brain now so primal it’ll just tangle her feet with any old childhood friend turned archenemy?

_ You’ve only got one of those,  _ she reminds herself.  _ And he’s sitting right there. _

“Doctor?” the Master asks. He’s not looking at her, instead fiddling with the cuffs of his shirt. 

And when did he take his coat off?

“Yeah?”

“Why are you still here?”

She’s not expecting her own question to be turned back on her.

“Uh. Well, there’s not exactly a spare TARDIS lying around.”

“But you haven’t looked for one. You haven’t tried to find your old self, or any of your friends, or… anything. It’s been two days, and you’ve just wandered around some tiny town with me.”

“I really don’t think it would be a good idea to go back on my timeline. I don’t remember anything, which would mean I’d have to do some sort of memory wipe, and that’d just be… I don’t want to do that.”

“Maybe I should clarify. Why are you still here, _ with me?”  _ He looks at her then. It makes something in her stomach twist.

“I don’t feel like running away,” she says, and it’s true. For the first time in a long time.

The Master reaches forwards and puts a hand on her ankle. It’s as light a brush as the grass of Gallifrey they used to play on, but it’s very present, and it’s entirely deliberate. The Doctor closes her eyes, gives herself two seconds to pretend she’s back in her childhood, and then pulls away, disentangling herself. 

The video has become a strange map of blocky colours, so she turns off the TV. She turns around, and tries to pretend like nothing deep and significant has ever happened between them.

“Time for bed,” she announces. “You probably need to have another piss, eh?”

The comic look of horror on his face is enough to lighten her mood again.

Many traumas later, they’ve relieved themselves, and the Doctor is rummaging around in the battered old set of drawers. She finds what she was looking for, sets the pyjamas on the bed, and takes off her coat.

“Wait,” says the Master, who has climbed into bed with his shoes on. “Wait, what? What are you doing - aah!”

She tosses her braces towards the couch, and shucks her shoes and socks beneath the bed. Apparently this is too much for the Master. He’s ducked beneath the sheets so he can’t see her. 

“Oh, it’s not like you haven’t seen it all before,” she scoffs, swapping her trousers out for pyjama pants and sighing in the relief that comes with undoing her bra.

The only sound from beneath the covers is a faint whine. The Doctor tugs on the pyjama shirt and hops into bed next to the Master.

“I’m done,” she says, patting the duvet-covered lump. 

Two screwed up eyes emerge, peeking at her.

“Seriously, what is it?” For goodness’ sake, they’d taken baths together as kids. 

The Master wriggles around a bit, and then produces his shoes, dropping them on the floor.

“You’re gonna be a bit hot in the vest, too.”

He sighs, but takes that off too and drops it next to the bed. He’s still not looking at her.

“Fine,” says the Doctor, folding her arms. “Don’t talk to me. See if I care.” 

She reaches over to the bedside lamp, switches it off, and turns so she’s facing away from the Master.

“Goodnight,” comes a murmur from beside her.

She waits a moment before replying.

“Goodnight.”


	4. Electric Cars and Unnecessary Milk

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Theta has known Koschei since they were tiny. They’ve always known each other. _Theta knows Koschei_ is just a fact of the universe. _Koschei knows Theta_ is its twin, a perfect balance.
> 
> But what about the Doctor? The Doctor is more than Theta Sigma. The Doctor has countless past lives, unknown to her, unknown to the Master. The Doctor doesn’t always know the Master, and the Master doesn’t know all of her faces.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Guess who has more time to write than ever? This person! Guess who still takes ages to write? You guessed it! Me again!
> 
> Hope you enjoy 💖 and stay safe!

Koschei’s running down a tiny alley of the Citadel with Theta. He’s got a tight grip on Theta’s hand, but they’re outpacing Koschei as usual.

“Come _on,”_ Theta tells him, tugging at his hand. He tries to run faster, but his legs are stuck in something invisible, like they’re moving through water. Theta keeps pulling at him, but he can’t move, and he can’t let go of their hand, he can’t, he can’t, he can’t.

He does.

Then the world goes black and he falls onto something cold and hard. The marbled floor of the Panopticon.

Theta’s there, too, but she’s wearing a different face. Koschei couldn’t tell you how he knows it’s her. But he does.

She’s surrounded by the High Council, and they’re all placing their hands on her shoulders.

“What’s happening?” he asks. 

No one pays him any attention.

“Theta!” he yells, more than a little hurt. What’s going on?

She turns, then, and frowns.

“Do I know you?” she asks.

A thousand drums start to play in Koschei’s head, echoing infinitely, layering over each other in the familiar rhythm of insanity.

“Theta Sigma,” he whispers. “I’m your best friend. Koschei.”

She looks up at Rassilon for advice, who places a hand on her chin, turning her head away from Koschei. The floor falls out from underneath Koschei again, sending him spinning endlessly into blackness, until he meets something soft and -

“Theta!” Koschei yells, jolting awake. 

He’s tangled in the weird thin scratchy white blankets of the bed, but he doesn’t immediately register that as anything other than _I’m trapped._ He thrashes about in panic, trying to free himself. His hand brushes against a warm lump, which it automatically pushes.

Theta yelps as she’s unceremoniously pushed out of the bed.

Sense starts to come back to Ko - the Master. _You’re the Master now, so get it into your thick skull. The Master._

Theta’s head pops into view above the bed, and Koschei can’t stop himself. He lunges for her, grips her shoulders, he needs to feel her warm and solid and present and -

“What?” Theta asks, searching his face. “What is it?”

“Theta?”

Something complicated and timeless and painful flashes on her face.

“I… Yeah? What?”

“Who am I?”

She frowns and says, “You’re the Master.”

“No, no, the other one,” Koschei insists. He’s trying so hard not to yell in her face, not to grip her too tight, not to scare her.

She gives him the same look she always does when he asks to be called by his name. Hesitant, vulnerable, and pissed about it.

“Koschei.”

What is it about his name on her tongue that has so much power to calm him? His hands loosen, the fear releases its icy grip on his heart, and his mind clears. It’s something about being known, but it’s more specific than that. It’s her knowing him. 

Theta has known Koschei since they were tiny. They’ve always known each other. _Theta knows Koschei_ is just a fact of the universe. _Koschei knows Theta_ is its twin, a perfect balance.

But what about the Doctor? The Doctor is more than Theta Sigma. The Doctor has countless past lives, unknown to her, unknown to the Master. The Doctor doesn’t always know the Master, and the Master doesn’t know all of her faces.

“What’s this about?” the Doctor asks, narrowing her eyes. “You’re not recording, or something?”

The Master, who has woken up enough to really be the Master, lets go of her and rolls his eyes.

“I’m insulted you think I’d stoop that low,” he says, wriggling his legs around in an effort to disentangle them from the blankets. “I’m not _evil.”_

“That’s exactly what you are,” the Doctor retorts. “Seriously, what is it?”

The Master ignores her. He has to use his hands to get his legs out of the fuzzy mess his dream created. Stupid human invention, blankets.

“Well, whatever it is, can you try not to push me out of bed? I was actually quite enjoying sleeping. Refreshing, isn’t it?”

The Master can’t agree. In his experience so far, sleep is _traumatizing_.

They have breakfast with Liz again. She seems a little surprised to learn that they’ve found jobs, but the Doctor can tell she’s one of those people who’s learnt to roll with the flow of life. She likes those kinds of people. The kinds of people her companions grow to be.

Liz gives them a lift into town just in time for seven. Turns out she’s a doctor - a real one - and she’s on the morning surgery shift.

“Have a good first day,” she tells them when she drops them off, and smiles.

“Thanks,” says the Doctor. “Have a good day. Also, watch out for rain going upwards.”

“Don’t be silly. It doesn’t rain here,” Liz laughs, and drives off.

The Master watches the car drive off.

“She’s right,” he says gloomily. “It doesn’t.”

The Doctor remembers how Koschei always liked to watch the rain. He’d sit at a window, any window, all curled up with his chin on his knees and eyes wide as if they could take in more of the downpour. Like a cat.

“Why’d you choose Australia, then?”

The Master shrugs. “Someone said it was the most dangerous country in the world. Seemed like a fun idea at the time.”

They’re nearing the garage then, and the same man from yesterday is writing something in a grease-stained logbook. He looks up as they approach.

“Hello,” says the Doctor brightly. “I don’t think I caught your name yesterday, actually.”

“Brian. Old Mrs Baten dropped off her car last night, says her engine light’s been on for a couple of weeks. I had a look, nice easy fix. Give it an hour, and if ya can’t manage, just holla for me.”

The Doctor plasters a smile on her face. She hopes it looks as unnatural as it feels.

“There’ll be no need for me to holler.”

Brian huffs air through his nose doubtfully, raising his eyebrows.

“S’over there.” He waves a hand to a small red car.

She stretches her smile so wide it’s definitely more of a grimace, lips pulled tight across her face, and marches over to the car in question.

“I’ll, uh, show you where the counter is,” she hears Brian say to the Master. Her grin becomes a real one. The Master has got to be the worst candidate for customer service in the history of the universe.

The Doctor grabs a pair of safety goggles and fits them over her head. They’re not quite her style, but they’ll do for protecting her squishy human eyes.

“Right.” She pats the car bonnet. “Let’s see what’s up.”

All of the Master’s elaborate disguises. All of his tricks. All of his acting. It all comes down to this one singular moment. He needs to use every ounce of willpower he has within him to keep the facade up.

“Hi, how may I help you?”

The hooded figure, apparently a human customer, grunts and tosses a small bright packet labelled _Hubba-Bubba_ onto the counter. Their face is covered by their hood and long locks of greasy brown hair.

The Master smiles so tightly it hurts his teeth and scans the packet.

“That’ll be one dollar and fifty cents. _Please._ ”

He might actually strain a muscle in his jaw if he’s not careful with this. Dirtying his tongue with human currency labels is difficult and saying _please_ is worse.

The figure grunts again and holds out a money note with the number _fifty_ written on it.

The Master feels his smile falter, and in desperation tries to boost it with his cheeks. It doesn’t work. His disguise is failing fast. He hides behind the register while he schools his expression, typing in the amount and pulling out cash. 

By the time he hands the customer their receipt and change, his smile is back on, though it’s wobbling precariously.

“Have a nice day,” he manages.

The customer grunts again and ambles out of the shop.

The Doctor fixes the engine fault in ten minutes. Nothing but a clogged radiator and the coolant needing topped up. 

_Boring._

She wipes her greasy hands on her borrowed coveralls and sighs. She could go and get Brian now, and he’d be impressed, and she’d have a job. 

_Or._

She could _not_ go and get Brian and instead spend the next fifty minutes doing something very exciting. Mrs Baten surely wouldn’t object to a free upgrade… 

“Hi, how may I help you?”

The Master loses track of how many times he says it. There’s customer after customer after customer, interaction after interaction after boring interaction, and by the end of the first hour, his brain feels like a useless pile of slitheen skin left in the sun for too long.

He takes a window of opportunity with no customers in store to sneak over to the garage and see how the Doctor’s doing.

“Slow down,” comes Brian’s voice from around the corner. “You did _what?”_

The Master pauses to listen.

“I found a lithium battery in the junk yard down the road, and I thought it’d be handy to slide in next to the engine. You know, so the engine charges the battery, the car has two power sources, it’s more reliable, more efficient…”

“How did you - that’s not what I asked you to do!”

“Yeah, I know, but I’m brilliant, so I did more. And come on, this is pretty good, eh?” The Master can tell there’s a smile in her voice. It makes him smile, and not in the customer service way.

“It’s a hybrid. You converted it into a hybrid car. In an hour.”

“Good, you’re keeping up. And on top there’s the solar panels -”

“There’s the _what?!”_

The Master grins wider and leaves them to it.

The Doctor’s not sure what Brian wants from her. She’s made the car better. _Much_ better. And Mrs Baten is persuaded of the new design’s relative merits relatively easily… Once she realises how much money she’ll save on fuel. It’s a win-win.

“You can’t just go around making people’s cars -”

“Better? Because it’s better! And I did it in an hour, and it’ll save the planet just a little bit, and don’t pretend you’re not impressed.” She folds her arms.

Brian’s mouth moves, and he makes a faint choking sound. 

“You okay?”

“I - I - it’s just that it shouldn’t be possible. How did - what did - who are you? Really?”

“I’m the Doctor,” she says, flicking her hair dramatically.

Brian looks at her, his brow furrowed.

“I’m gonna give you a raise,” he says slowly, “if you promise me something.”

“What?”

“You’ve gotta teach me how to do that.”

The Doctor smiles broadly and claps Brian on the shoulder.

“Deal.”

Hours later, the Master stares into the distance. He can’t remember a time when he wasn’t working here. His feet have gone numb from standing so long; his eyes water from the harsh white lights; his mind has long since transitioned from slitheen skin into slitheen dung which he’s sure is dripping out his ears.

“Hey!” someone yells from across the room.

The Master looks up foggily. “What?”

“You’re out of toothpaste!”

“Oh. Bugger.”

“I need toothpaste!”

With a herculean effort, the Master drags his customer service self back onto display.

“Sorry, ma’am, we’ll be sure to have it in stock as soon as possible.”

The woman scoffs and sulks her way over to the milk. The Master rolls his eyes when he’s sure she’s not looking.

Suddenly a thump, a strangled cry, and a nasty _crack_ comes from the third aisle. The Master vaults over the counter and runs around the corner to see an elderly woman lying prone on the floor. Her head is suspiciously near a hard packing box.

“Shit,” he mutters, and kneels beside her. 

Two other customers appear in the aisle and bend over the woman’s body, murmuring in worried tones. The Master puts a gentle hand on her shoulder.

“Can you hear me? Hello? Ma’am?”

A low groan sounds from the woman, and the Master sighs in relief. The Doctor would kill him if she thought he’d killed someone.

“Don’t move,” he says. “You’ve hit your head. I’m going to get a health kit.”

He realises as soon as he’s back at the counter that he doesn’t know if earth even has health kits. He looks for the familiar mauve box, but finds nothing. There’s a strange little green thing though, with a big white plus on it.

Inside there are some bandages, some little white things (do humans still take _pills?_ Really?), some strange bottles that claim to disinfect, and a small pair of scissors. 

In other words, there’s nothing.

Where’s the medscanner? The biobufferer? The weird little protein noodles that come in silly shapes? The Master swears once, twice, and then looks up to see the woman who yelled at him approach. She puts her milk on the counter.

“I’m in a bit of a hurry,” she says.

The Master gapes.

“I’m going to miss my bus, hurry up.”

“I’m so sorry,” the Master hisses. “But we’ve got a bit of a medical emergency at the moment.”

“Excuse me, please?” asks someone else, one of the appropriately concerned customers. “I really think we should call an ambulance. She’s not very responsive.”

Thank fuck the humans have enough sense to know about ambulances.

“Can’t you just scan my milk?” asks the second most annoying person in the universe.

The Master ignores her and reaches for the phone by his till.

“What’s the emergency number here?”

“Zero-zero-zero,” says the appropriately concerned customer.

The Master dials, only to hear a long tone that doesn’t sound like an ambulance being played through the phone speaker. Then he sees the annoying woman’s hand on the hangup button of the phone. She waves her hand under his nose obnoxiously.

“Hello? I’m in a rush? Did that get through to you?”

The Master balls up the fist that isn’t holding the phone, passes the phone to the appropriately concerned customer (who immediately begins to dial in an appropriately concerned sort of way), and then slams his hands on the counter.

“You’re in a rush? You’re _in a rush??_ There’s someone’s entire life at risk, right now, right here, and you’re in a rush.” He stops to laugh bitterly. “It didn’t even cross your puny little mind that someone might be more important than you, did it? Does the thought ever occur to you that every single mind outside of yours is equally complex? No. No. Every single mind outside of yours is _more_ complex.”

“Are you calling me stupid?” the woman demands.

“Yes. Well done. You figured that bit out.”

“I’m going to talk to your manager.”

“Do! Do it. It’s worth it to me just to tell you what a disgusting fragile little human you are. You’re not even buying anything important, it’s just _milk.”_

The Master picks up the milk and waves it in her face.

“Milk doesn’t have feelings. It’s not conscious. It doesn’t have a mind of its own. It can’t be killed like a person can. I wouldn’t ring an emergency number for the milk, now, would I?”

The woman’s face is very red, but she doesn’t reply. The Master can feel his control slipping, the maniacal smile twisting its way onto his face.

“Would you ring an emergency number for the milk? Would you? If I stabbed it? If I hit it? If I let it pour out onto the ground?”

He twists the cap off and upends the milk over the counter. The woman leaps back, but some has already splashed onto her shoes.

“I’m not going to stand here and take this,” she says. “Well done. You’ve just lost a customer.” And with that, she books it out of the store, milk-less. The Master tosses the empty milk carton at her retreating back, and then freezes when he sees the Doctor and Brian watching from outside the shop.

“Fuck,” he sighs.

He’s fired from the shop, of course. Brian claps him on the shoulder, though, and tells him it was a good show, but it’s clear he’s not cut out for customer service. The Master knows he should be disappointed for failing but he’s honestly just relieved.

The Doctor doesn’t say anything to him afterwards, though, just fixes him with an inscrutable stare whenever she thinks he’s not looking. He tries to ignore the little ball of panic building up in his stomach. She doesn’t tell him to piss off, though, and she doesn’t object to him sitting next to her on the bus and going home with her, so she can’t be entirely too mad with him. 

Can she?

She’s silent at home, too, disappearing into the room with the weird white tub for half an hour while the Master tries not to panic with less and less success. He paces around the room, his heartbeat ringing in his ears. His singular heartbeat.

He never thought he’d miss the drums, but here he is.

When the Doctor finally emerges into the main room, the Master takes a deep breath and walks right up to her. He puts his hands on her shoulders.

“Are you mad at me?”

The Doctor blinks.

“You what?”

“Don’t make me ask again.” It’s humiliating enough having to acknowledge that he cares about what she thinks of him.

Her mouth quivers, and then she laughs.

“I’m not mad at you, idiot.”

The panic ball in his chest gets slightly less panicked.

“You’re not?” Ugh. He hates how it sounds, all high and hopeful and pathetic.

“I’m really really not. I’m a bit mad at Brian for firing you, but I also kinda get it. I’m very mad at the milk woman, but also kinda glad she did what she did.”

“Why?”

“Because I got to see you being a decent person.” The Doctor smiles.

Her eyes, the Master suddenly notices, are a deep brown, with just a hint of green. They hold him in place.

“Oh,” he manages.

“Do it more often,” she says, and ruffles his hair. 

The Master yelps and ducks, falling onto the floor in his haste to escape her. She grins and lunges for him again. He staggers away, smiling like anything. He’s too slow, he’s always been too slow, but that’s why they play it this way. It wouldn’t be any fun if she didn’t catch him.


	5. You Are Not Alone

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Remember to leave kudos/comments if you enjoy 💖 stay safe and sane and home!

That night, the Doctor takes a little while to get to sleep. She can hear the Master snoring faintly beside her. It’s distracting.  _ He’s _ distracting. Why is he so distracting? She was managing just fine before he came along. Even when he did come along, she was managing alright. She just went on hating him and he went on hating her.

But when he does this sort of thing - when he shows the ability to be a semi-decent person - that’s when it all gets confusing. That’s when she starts to backtrack on her beliefs. 

_ Maybe there’s some good in there. _

Then, of course, there are the other side effects. Seeing him angry usually makes her angry (because it’s usually her he’s angry at), but this time was different. He was  _ justifiably  _ angry, and justifiably angry at  _ someone else.  _

It had made her feel strange: hot all over, and like she couldn’t breathe enough, and also like she could run for hours on end with energy. She doesn’t have a word for that particular human experience yet. She hadn’t been able to trust herself to speak the entire way home. Just  _ looking _ at him would make the feeling start again, which wasn’t bad, except she kept getting urges to do things. Things that weren’t socially acceptable. Things that weren’t  _ personally  _ acceptable.

Then when they’d got home, and they were alone, there was less of a barrier between her and the Master and all the things her mind wouldn’t shut up about. So she’d shut herself in the bathroom. She’d splashed cold water on her face. It seemed to help.

Now she lies awake and stares at the ceiling. She wonders what she’s doing. Where this is going. How she’s going to sleep in the same bed as the Master for who knows how long. She props herself up on her elbows and leans over him, watching for any response. He snuffles faintly in his sleep.

He looks so innocent like this, with the moonlight casting a gentle sheen on his skin and his mouth half open. If she didn’t know better, she might think he was a real human.

She flops back down on the bed, having done enough watching-the-Master-in-his-sleep for one night. Unfortunately, his sleeping body takes this as something to shuffle towards. He rolls onto his side, and before the Doctor can shuffle out of arm’s reach, he’s snuggled up to her.

“Ugh,” she sighs, but after a moment, she puts a hand on the arm that’s reaching over her chest. She can pretend to be disgusted in the morning. For now, he’s actually quite warm. Though his hair smells a bit off.

_ Oh, right. Showers. Should remember to take those. _

The Doctor tries to remember how often humans wash. What a lot of maintenance they have - she almost doesn’t blame them for getting stuck in their routines. Is it once every week? Month? Surely it can’t be too much more than that. They’d never get anything done otherwise.

And so the Doctor falls asleep to vague thoughts of personal hygiene.

“Theta?”

It’s not morning this time - or at least, it’s not a reasonable hour. The Doctor opens her eyes blearily to find the Master staring at her with the same strange ferocity he’s woken up with the last two days.

“Koschei,” she yawns. “Koschei.” 

“Theta!”

“That’s me. And you’re Koschei. Calm down, you’re okay. Breathe, yeah?” She reaches out a tired, floppy hand and pats him on the shoulder clumsily.

He does calm down after a few moments, his breathing slowing, and the sanity returns to his eyes.

“What’s the time?” she asks, stifling another yawn.

Koschei pushes himself up to squint at the clock.

“Er. It’s four.”

Theta lets out a load groan. “Whyyyyyy. Why would you do this to me?”

Koschei flops back down onto the pillow and says, “Look, it’s not intentional.”

“Then what is it?” 

She’s already turned towards him, so she shuffles a little closer. He looks across at her and shrugs.

“It’s… hard to explain.”

“I’ve got all night - well, all morning. Most of the morning. About eight hours left of morning, not all of which I have free. Anyway, just, try me.”

Koschei sighs, and turns towards her properly. It’s been so long, but here in the dark, Theta could almost forget how many times their faces have changed. It’s just another night in the academy, stealing into each other’s beds, whispering secrets they’ll probably regret in the light of day.

“How many of your faces did I miss?” he asks, and it throws her off guard.

“What?”

“How many regenerations did I just - not see?”

“Er.” She tries to remember. “I think… just two. No. Three? Three. What about you?”

“You haven’t missed any.” He sounds odd.

“Why?”

“I missed three of yours, and then all the rest. Every face before that. However many lives you’ve had. I always thought you were - we were - you know.”

Theta does not, in fact, know.

“We were… what?”

“The same age, for one. Roughly.”

She’s beginning to sense where this is going.

“Look, I’ve been trying not to think about this,” she huffs.

“You were the one who wanted to talk!”

“Yeah, but not about  _ that _ . I thought  _ you _ were going to be the emotionally vulnerable one.”

“I have never been emotionally vulnerable in my life,” Koschei sniffs. “You should have known better.”

Theta pokes him hard in the stomach, and he yelps.

“You’ll always be squishy vulnerable little Koschei to me.”

“I am  _ not _ squishy,” he growls, and in a move she should have seen coming, he pokes her right back.

What he doesn’t know about this particular body is that it’s very reactive, which is to say, it’s highly ticklish. She squawks, flails, and accidentally hits him in the face with a stray arm.

“Ow!”

“I’m not sorry!”

“I’m bleeding! Look! You’ve killed me!”

The Doctor switches the light on, and sure enough, there’s blood dripping out the Master’s nose.

“Oh, shit,” she says, her mind racing. “Um. Apply pressure to the wound. I think that’s a thing you’re supposed to do.”

She leans across the bed and pushes her hand into the Master’s nose.

“Ow!” 

“Sorry! Sorry! Maybe not that hard.” She grabs the sheet and holds it more gently over the same spot, wiping her now-bloody hand. “There we go.”

The Master’s eyes are watery, with residual emotion or physical pain she can’t tell.

“I didn’t realise noses were such a weak spot,” he mumbles.

“Neither. There’s quite a bit of blood, you know, more than I would have thought for a tiny organ like that… Are you sure you’re, y’know, okay?”

Even with his mouth obstructed by the sheet, she can see the telltale lifting of his eyes as he smiles.

“Oh,  _ Doctor _ . I didn’t know you cared.”

“I  _ will  _ hit you again,” she threatens, waggling her other hand in his face. Perhaps the threat falls a little flat while she’s helping him heal from the first blow.

He rolls his eyes, and she bunches up the sheet to make a more effective nosebleed-stauncher. After a few moments she remembers what led to this whole thing, and what she was aiming for. It’s tempting to let it drop. She’s not particularly keen to think about the uncountable past lives she might’ve had and what the hell that means for her already-confused identity.

Fuck it. It’s already too late.

“Talking,” she says. “We should do it. Sometime.”

The Master narrows his eyes at her. “I thought we’d agreed to let it drop.”

“We did not!”

“Ugh. Worth a try.”

“So.” She takes a deep breath. “We both found out a lot of stuff that changes a lot of stuff. And how I see me. And how you see you. And other, y’know, stuff. I haven’t really had enough time to think of all the stuff it changes, but maybe you have, because you’ve had a lot longer than me to -”

“You’re rambling,” the Master murmurs.

“Right. Sorry. Anyway. Um. A lot of stuff has changed, and I haven’t gotten through it all yet. If some of the changed stuff is…  _ bothering _ you? Is that the right word? You know what I mean. If something’s getting to you, you can talk. To me. No promises on any coherent sort of reply, but. Better than nothing. Maybe.”

The Master’s avoiding her gaze, but he nods at her shoulder.

“Is there something in particular?” she asks. “Something that’s making you have bad dreams?”

He nods again.

“Care to elaborate?”

“I don’t know how to… Can I show you?”

The Master raises a hand and hovers it above her temple. She flinches automatically away from it. The thought of her lonely, craggy, jumbled mind being scrutinised is instinctively repulsive. A flash of hurt crosses the Master’s face, and she almost wishes she could accept it. But she can’t.

“You don’t have to tell me,” she says quickly. “Is there something I can do? To help with the dreams? I think some humans take medicine to stop them. Ooh, or we could try a mind-cleansing ritual. Couldn’t hurt.”

The Master pushes her hand away from his nose and sniffs experimentally.

“Think it’s stopped bleeding.”

The Doctor nods, letting the sheet fall and feeling increasingly more awkward.

“Doctor?”

“Yeah?”

“There’s one thing you could do.” They’re both staring at their hands.

“Yeah?”

“You can say no.”

“I know.”

“I need to know I’m not alone.”

“I… How do I do that?”

The Master sighs. “Turn out the light.”

She does, even though her brain actively resists doing anything people tell her. Then she feels a hand on hers. She stiffens, but lets the Master pull her hand up. He settles it in the middle of his chest. Usually from here she’d be able to feel the double heartbeats, one by the base of her palm, one beneath her fingertips. It’s strange just to feel the one.

She shifts her hand a little further over to feel his heart better.

“Less alone?” she whispers.

“Yeah,” the Master whispers back. She pretends not to notice the crack in his voice.

The rest of the morning is significantly less traumatic. The Doctor goes to her job again, and insists on bringing the Master with her, if only to make sure he doesn’t somehow manage to accidentally kill his human body with something in their house. She makes him promise to meet her on her breaks, and not to get lost, and then she lets him loose into the wilderness of small-town Australian suburbia.

She and Brian work on cars together through the day. He teaches her the human names of all the tools, and she starts on the mountainous task of getting him up to scratch with a Gallifreyan teenager’s level of basic mechanics. He’s not stupid, but he’s not a Time Lord, so she glosses over psychic matrices and all the other too-alien-sounding words. 

It’s surprisingly interesting, and fulfilling, and enjoyable. The Doctor thinks she might be able to do this for a while yet.

Meanwhile, the Master is getting bored. He walks a few blocks one way, then a few blocks the other way, then inevitably overheats and sits on a bench. He experiments with kicking various pebbles around on the sidewalk from there. Gravity here is a little weaker than on Gallifrey, which makes all the stones seem to bounce just a bit too much if he thinks about it too hard. 

It’s been about twenty minutes. It’s clear he’s going to need something other than pebbles to occupy his time. This is usually when his next big plan would start to surface.

It’s a little more difficult to plan an alien takeover when he’s human, though. He struggles as a Time Lord to keep them under control - now most monster races would just as soon eat him as work with him.  _ Ugh. _ No. For humans, there are just a few narrow avenues to power, and they take time.

Well. He’s got fifteen years. 

Where to begin, then? Politics? No. He really doesn’t want to do the prime minister thing again. It was far too close to the Prydonian nonsense he’d had to deal with back on Gallifrey: debates and controversies, sucking up to the important people, and such a lot of paperwork.  _ And _ he’d had hypnotism on his side last time. Not that he’s tried hypnotising anyone, just yet, in this body… 

The Master finds an appropriately susceptible human in the form of a supermarket checkout employee.

“Welcome to big W, how can I help you?”

The Master has a brief but traumatic flashback to yesterday. He shakes it off and tries not to see himself in the bored face of the checkout employee.

“You will obey me,” he says firmly, maintaining eye contact. 

“I’m sorry?”

“I am the Master, and you will obey -”

The employee picks up her phone and holds it to her ear. The Master, having had security rung on him quite a few times in the last few days, gets the idea and makes his exit quickly.

So. Hypnotism doesn’t work anymore. That means mass-influencing is off the table, and with it, any chance of quick power-grabbing. The Master doesn’t pretend to understand all the intricacies of human society, but one thing has been made very clear to him since being stuck in a human body.

Money is  _ everything _ .

Well, not everything, but it’s a lot. A ticket to food, and shelter, and all those sorts of basic things. And if someone had a lot more money than everyone else, the Master imagines that in a capitalistic society like this one, they’d be very influential. Very powerful.

So then, how can he make a lot of money in a short time? (He has the faintest inkling that he might not be the first person to ask that question.) 

“Excuse me,” he says to a random passer-by. He knows he’s breaching human social etiquette, but, well, he’s evil.

“Uh, yeah?” says the man, looking vaguely annoyed.

“What jobs get paid the most?”

“Are you selling something?”

“What? No. Does selling something make a lot of money?”

The man rolls his eyes and pushes past him. It’s not long until the next passer-by, though, who the Master immediately accosts. He soon learns that the older the person is, the more likely they are to talk to him. By far the most informative conversation he has is with an elderly woman called Mary-Anne: not only is she lonely, but she’s clever, and she doesn’t mind answering questions that most humans seem to get frustrated over.

“But if you had to pick one job that earned the most, what would it be?” the Master asks.

“Well, the people who earn the most in the world own businesses,” she muses. “But that’s more luck than anything, and don’t let anyone tell you otherwise. The highest-earning profession… Well, I suppose that would be… a doctor.”

The Master does his best to control his reaction, but he can’t help a sort of strangled choking noise of frustration.

“Cough lozenge, dear?”

“No, thanks,” he forces out. “Tell me more about businesses, though. Is it hard to start one?”

“Not really, dear, I used to own a very profitable electronics shop…”

Mary-Anne talks to him for a full hour about business models, products and profits, hierarchies of command, employees and wages and health insurance. She’s a gold mine of information, and the Master sucks it all up eagerly. Once she’s covered the basics, she gives him her phone number and tells him to call her if he has any more questions. 

She also pinches his cheek. He has to actively stop himself from ducking out of the way.

“Bye, dearie, and good luck!”

“Thank you,” he says, and helps her onto her bus. 

She’s really very unsteady on her feet, and what she calls a zimmer-frame does a little but not a lot. Have they not invented active-moulding supports here yet? No, of course they haven’t. It seems like healthcare is a sorely neglected field of innovation.

The Master begins to walk back to the garage, and muses over his findings on the way. Humans operate on a sort of product basis - someone produces the products, people buy the products for more than they’re worth, and the extra money is where you make the profit.

The question is: how can the Master manipulate that process to make the most money possible?

He needs to make something that humans will buy in vast quantities. Something that every household needs. Something unique that isn’t already out there. The Master’s brain spits up an image at him of a small green health kit badly in need of an upgrade, and he allows himself a smile. The humans aren’t going to know what hit them… 

“Whatcha been up to?” the Doctor asks him over lunch. 

(Lunch is another rotisserie chicken, but this time she made him buy it legally, since Brian gave him his wages in cash yesterday.)

“I helped an old woman get on a bus,” he says honestly. “She was the most intelligent person I’ve met around here. Other than you.”

The Doctor tilts her head and croons, “Awww, am I intelligent?”

“Shut up.”

“Seriously, though. I figured you’d have gotten bored and started plotting something by now. Let me know earlier rather than later, yeah?”

The Master hates how she can just know him like that. It’s not fair.

“Why would I let you know earlier?”

“So I can foil your plans before they get out of hand.”

“When have you ever managed that?”

She scrunches up her nose.

“I… There’s a first time for everything. That’s why I’m asking you to tip me off.”

“I’m not going to tip you off about my own evil plan!”

“Aha! So there  _ is _ an evil plan!” She looks far too triumphant for having just found out he’s planning something evil. 

He rolls his eyes. “Fine. My evil plan is to build up poison immunity, day after day, and eventually poison this chicken we’re both eating.”

She freezes with her hand halfway to her mouth with a greasy strip of chicken.

“You wouldn’t.”

“But how do you know that?”

She makes eye contact with him, holds it, and deliberately eats the chicken strip. He knows it’s supposed to be in defiance of his evil plotting, but it doesn’t exactly come across that way. What is it about this regeneration and eating with her hands that gets to him so easily?

“Anyway, uh, how’s Brian? Has he gotten over the spilled milk yet?”

The Doctor shrugs. “He’s been telling every customer we get the whole story, but it gets more ridiculous each time. By the end of it you’re going to be cast as some sort of vengeful milk god.”

The Master quite likes the sound of that, actually.

“Are you sure you’re not bored?” she asks suddenly.

“I’m thinking of things to do.”

“I forbid you from doing evil things. Alright? Think of nice things. Benevolent things.”

He sighs. “Why must you restrict me so, Doctor?”

“Because you’re a literal menace to society.” She pushes him on the shoulder gently. “Ooh. Tell you what you can do today, actually. Can you get groceries?”

“Groceries?”

“Food from the supermarket. To keep at home. And eat. And cook. And other stuff.”

“Um,” says the Master, feeling a little daunted by the task. “I can try.”

“Brilliant. Here, take this.” 

The Doctor holds out a few notes of cash. The Master takes them and tucks them into his pocket. He distinctly hates the feeling of having to rely on her for anything, ever, but his human body also distinctly hates the feeling of hunger, so he’ll get over it.

“Can you remember to get potatoes? I think potatoes are important. Just make the rest of it up. I’m gonna go back early and make sure Brian hasn’t fried the batteries yet.”

“Bye,” says the Master, committing  _ potatoes _ carefully to memory. “Don’t blow anything up.”

“No promises.” 

She grins at him before leaping down the stairs and jogging back to the garage.

Right.  _ Groceries. _ This shouldn’t be too hard.

Half an hour later, the Master is slowly dissociating on the floor of the cereal aisle. He’s vividly reminded of the first time he was let into the vaults on Gallifrey. He had started with section alpha, read all the books on the shelf one by one, and gone on to the next, which was how he was sure you were  _ supposed _ to deal with libraries. When the library had closed at the end of the day, he’d screamed at the librarians and had to be bodily hauled out by Theta. 

To put it concisely, the Master’s brain is just really, really bad at skim reading.

He’s about halfway through methodically analysing each cereal box when he’s approached by someone.

“Excuse me, sir, would you mind not putting the boxes on the floor?”

He starts and looks up at the short girl in her supermarket uniform.

“It’s just that we’re worried about hygiene.”

“Right,” he says, “Sorry. I’ll just, uh, put these back.”

She kneels down beside him to help.

“Which one is the best?” he asks, trying to hide the desperation in his voice.

She looks a little bemused. “Um. There’s not really one that’s the best? What exactly are you looking for, in terms of… cereal?”

The Master sighs. “I don’t know.”

“Then just pick one and try it.” She smiles at him.

The Master frowns, but reaches out a hand and chooses a box at random. 

“Wait. Can I pick more than one?”

“Of course,” she laughs. “I think you’ve been living in the outback too long.”

“Yeah, well, time flies.”

“Let me know if you need any more help, sir.” She leaves him alone to ponder the brief exchange. He was far too nice to her, and it makes him feel off-kilter.

To compensate, he buys one of every single type of cereal, remembering to put a singular potato in his trolley at the last moment.

“You’ve been busy,” the Doctor remarks as he waddles towards her with his six packed supermarket bags. “See you tomorrow, Brian!”

An incomprehensible grunt comes from the garage. The Doctor takes three of the bags from him, swinging them by her side as they walk.

“You’re in a good mood,” the Master says.

“Yeah,” she agrees. “Turns out not all human jobs are boring. Well. Not for one day, at least. You might need to ask me again in a week.”

_ In a week. _ It’s strange how quickly being human has put them into a routine with the expectation it’ll carry on. The Master knows, somewhere, intrinsically, that in a week he’ll still be with the Doctor. It should be suffocating. (It’s not.)

“I was talking to Brian, actually, and he said you might be able to work with me. As my assistant.” She raises an eyebrow.

_ So that’s why you’re all smug. _

“As your…  _ assistant.” _

“Yeah. Of course, you’d get paid a little less than me, but it’d be much easier for me to keep an eye on you there.”

“I’m not one of your human pets, Doctor. Am I going to have to keep reminding you?”

They’re interrupted by the arrival of the bus, on which they manage to squeeze into a seat beneath their bulky shopping bags. The Doctor still isn’t deterred.

“You need something to do. Something that’s not an evil plot.”

“I was actually thinking about that today, and -”

“I’m gonna stop you right there. Before you tell me what you’re planning, go through the three Ns: Nice, Normal, and Not Murderous.”

“Have you had this conversation with someone else already?” Just how many evil nemeses does the Doctor try to therapize?

“No, it’s this thing my fam - never mind.”

“What, the humans came up with that? What for?”

“Do you have to ask?”

“Yes,” says the Master. “Of course.”

“Fine.  _ Fine.  _ So. When we’re not in life-threatening danger -”

“Not very often, then,” the Master chimes in helpfully.

“ - yes,  _ thank you for that contribution _ \- I get a bit bored. And sometimes my brain just comes up with plans. Even when we don’t really need them.”

“And your humans…”

“They make me use the three Ns. Normal is the biggest problem, honestly. Humans are so funny like that. They always want to blend in.”

The Master imagines her humans - her  _ fam, _ as she always puts it - making her change her plan with the three Ns. Maybe they’re not so different after all. 

“So if I can promise my plan passes the three Ns… you’ll let me do it?”

“You have to actually promise me, though. Multiple times. Without lying. I’ll be able to tell.”

_ No you won’t. _

“Deal,” he says.

The Doctor, upon unloading the shopping bags, doesn’t seem too perturbed by the abundance of cereal and nothing else.

“I think you’re supposed to have cereal with milk, usually,” she says mildly, looking at the array now sitting on their table.

The Master shrugs. “Haven’t you heard? I’m a milk god now.”

“You’re going to milk that for all it’s - oh, I see what I did there! Do you see what I did there?”

“You can’t just use the word  _ milk _ and pretend like it’s funny -”

“Yeah, I can, though.” She sticks out her tongue at him. 

His brain buffers for a second while he tries to think of a comeback, but if you’re wasting time trying to think of a comeback for the Doctor, you’ve already failed.

“Ooh, potate!” The Doctor gently lifts out the singular potato and holds it high above her head. 

“Pota _ to, _ I think.”

The Doctor glares at him and mutters  _ potate _ again under her breath. She carries it to the bed and places it on the windowsill above the headrest.

“You’ll be safe there,” she tells it, patting it tenderly. “I’ll watch over you.”

The Master clears his throat loudly.

“What is it?” she asks, not looking away from the potato.

“My plan,” he says. “It passes the three Ns.”

She looks back then.

“Are you sure?”

“Yes.”

“Are you  _ completely  _ sure?”

_ “Yes.” _

She comes to stand in front of him, peering closely at his face. He can smell the faintest hint of chicken on her breath.

“Do you promise?”

“I promise.”

She squints at him and sighs.

“Shake on it?” the Master suggests.

“Yeah, alright.”

At the same time, they both spit into their hands, extend them, and shake, in the time-honoured tradition of Theta-and-Koschei-making-promises. It doesn’t have to mean anything, because the Master’s broken almost every single one of his promises to the Doctor, but… this time, he thinks it could. 

This time, he’s going to keep his promise.


	6. All Around You

“I’ve got to take a _what?”_

“A shower,” says the Doctor patiently. “I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but you stink.”

“Oh. I thought that was just what humans smelt like.”

The Doctor rolls her eyes and points to the bathroom.

“Shower. Now. I’m not sleeping in the same bed as you unless you do.”

The Master groans dramatically, pushing himself off the couch. He stumbles and staggers his way to the bathroom as if he’s having to fight against a heavy wind and fight his way through thick bushes. Finally, at the door, he collapses onto his knees.

“Oh, stop it,” says the Doctor. “I’m not going to carry you in there.”

“What a good idea.” The Master flops onto his stomach halfway through the door.

The Doctor purses her lips and pointedly picks up her book, pretending to read it. The silence stretches on, and the Master doesn’t move a muscle. She lasts for all of two minutes before throwing it down in exasperation.

“What is your problem?” she demands, going to stand over him. “Why can’t you just be a normal person?”

The Master doesn’t say anything. A flicker of worry sparks in her.

“Master?”

Silence.

She bends down and grabs his shoulder, flipping him over to reveal his bastard face and a bastard grin.

“Had you worried, didn’t I?”

She shoves his chest. “Not in the slightest. Come on. Get up.”

His eyes glitter dangerously.

“Make me.”

She takes a deep breath, willing herself not to punch him in the face, and then she grabs him underneath the arms and begins to bodily drag him into the bathroom.

“Doctor!” he yelps, squirming. “That tickles!”

“Tough.” She kicks open the shower curtain and heaves him into the tub, fully dressed. “There you go.”

He props himself up on his elbows and frowns.

“That wasn’t very nice.”

“No, it wasn’t, was it?”

And with that she twists the shower control, drenching the Master in freezing cold water. He screams, and then he coughs and splutters as the water gets into his mouth. The Doctor backs away, perching on the sink bench in order to avoid getting soaked herself. Eventually the Master manages to push himself onto his knees and reach up to turn the tap off. He turns to the Doctor, hands on the side of the bathtub, hair dripping wet and splayed over his face.

“You’ll pay for that,” he growls, and grabs the shower faucet, turning it towards her. 

She realizes what he’s going to do a second too late, and cold water hits her face before she can duck. She holds her hands in front of her face and slides off the bench, making a run for the door.

“Oh no you don’t!”

But the Doctor’s already out the door, and she slams it shut, putting her full weight on it, shaking the wet hair out of her face.

“Doctor!”

She feels the thud as he throws himself against the door, but she holds it fast, grinning.

“Let me out!”

“Take a shower, and I’ll think about it,” she retorts.

The weight disappears from the door.

“Fine. _Fine._ I hate you.”

“Hate you more,” she says cheerfully, keeping her weight firmly on the door. And two seconds later, sure enough, she hears a heavy thump and the door rattles again.

“I’m not that stupid,” she says. “Now shower.”

“Well, it was worth a shot.”

The only sound after that is the faint trickle of water. Now that he’s finally complying with her, she knows she should be relieved, but it’s a bit boring. She didn’t think about having to entertain herself for ten minutes.

“Master?” she calls.

“What?”

“Do you actually know how to shower?”

“Of course.”

She frowns, and on a hunch, opens the bathroom door and pops her head around. The Master is standing beneath the showerhead with his arms crossed, shivering, fully clothed beneath the spray.

“There’s a warm setting,” she says mildly, pointing to the tap.

The Master looks at the tap, twists it over the red strip, and glares at her.

“Anything else?”

“You’re supposed to be naked,” she says, grinning.

“If you really think I’m going to fall for that, Doctor, you’re sorely -”

“No, really, you’re supposed to be naked in the shower. To rinse all the, uh, stuff off your body.” She waves a hand at his clothes. “Go on, take them off.”

The Master frowns at her.

“Look, I’ll try to dry them for you,” she says, exasperated. “Pass them here.”

“Turn around.”

She rolls her eyes but turns around, holding her hand out behind her. After a few moments, a large bundle of sopping clothes is thrust into it. She tries in vain to keep the drips away from her socks.

“Good luck,” she says, and edges out of the room, closing the door behind her. 

The Doctor scrunches her nose up at the wet clothes, and hangs them over the chairs and table. She lingers on the coat, though, for some unknown reason. It’s made of thick wool, rough under her fingers. She holds it up to her face and inhales.

That’s one of the funny things about regeneration. It changes you, your appearance, every single atom in your body renewing itself almost from scratch. But some things don’t change. For whatever reason, each Time Lord’s base scent stays the same. And even now, underneath all the funny human smells, she can taste the Master. All that he is, was, and ever will be.

It makes something in her ache.

“Doctor?”

She jumps and drops the coat.

“Uh, yeah?”

“This drink is disgusting.”

She frowns. _What drink?_ She tries to remember the human bathrooms on the TARDIS. They had little solid chunky things - _soap_ \- and then bottles of liquid for cleaning your hair -

“No, no, you’re not supposed to drink that! It’s for your hair, it’s called shampoo.”

“Well, why does it have fruit on the bottle?”

She laughs. “No idea. Humans are fucking weird.”

The Master thinks, all in all, that he’s done quite well. Apart from the shampoo-drinking incident, and the getting-his-clothes-wet incident, but he can blame the Doctor for those. He turns the shower off with a triumphant flourish, and seizes a nearby towel. 

(Time Lords know what towels are. After all, they’re one of the most massively useful things any interstellar hitchhiker ought to have.)

“Are my clothes dry?” he calls whilst towelling.

“Not at all. I’ll bring you some pyjamas,” says the Doctor. He hears drawers being opened and a faint rustling.

His heart drops. “No, no, I’ll just. Uh. Wear my damp clothes.”

“Not in our bed, you won’t.”

The door opens a crack, and he yelps, clutching his towel over himself, but only the Doctor’s hand reaches in to place a folded pair of pyjamas on the bench before closing the door again. The Master eyes the pyjamas with suspicion. They’re white with faded blue and orange stripes. 

He debates making a run for his clothes, shielded by his towel, but he doesn’t trust the Doctor not to make things difficult for him. And anyway, he doesn’t want her to see him in a towel any more than he wants her to see him in pyjamas. It’s not so much prudishness - well, okay, it’s that too - as a fear that makes him want to dig a hole, curl up in it, and never be seen again. 

It’s easy if you’re the Doctor. You’re _allowed_ to be vulnerable. That’s her whole aesthetic (not that she’d agree). But for the Master… He knows she’s not really scared of him, but _pyjamas_ are a whole new level of emotional intimacy. Will she ever be able to take him seriously again? Really properly seriously?

There’s only one way to find out.

He steels himself, puts on the pyjamas, and steps out of the bathroom. The Doctor looks up at him. She’s in pyjamas, too, tucked up in bed with her book resting on tucked up knees.

She smiles and goes back to reading.

Heart thudding in his ears (the one-two rhythm is something he’ll never get used to), the Master crosses the room and gets into bed next to her, shuffling down so only his head pokes out of the covers.

“Ready to sleep?” she asks.

He nods, not trusting his voice to speak. She puts her book down, switches off the light, and shuffles down to mirror him.

“Koschei?” she whispers.

His childhood name offers a steady lifeline, something he can cling to in his fear.

“Yeah?”

“It’s okay.”

Her hand reaches out, finding the same place over his heart. He can feel the warmth of her skin through the thin pyjama fabric. It helps more than he can put into words, and so he doesn’t. He just places a hand over hers. Eventually his heart slows down, his breathing evens out, and he falls into the first peaceful sleep of his life.

Koschei’s knee-deep in the red grasses of Gallifrey. There’s snow on the mountains, but it won’t get down to this level for another week or two. Theta’s here, too, but they’ve hidden themselves in the grasses.

“Theta!” he calls. “Theta, where are you?”

Suddenly two hands are clapped over his eyes from behind. 

“Guess who,” says Theta.

Koschei spins around, grinning, and takes one of Theta’s hands.

“Sneaky.”

“You’re just too slow,” Theta shrugs, squeezing his hand.

The grasses shift beneath Koschei’s feet, and then he’s in his room, and it’s late at night. He’s bent over an assignment on nebulae formation that he really should have started last week.

A knock sounds on his window. Koschei turns to see Theta, and hurries to open it.

“Hi,” says Theta, climbing in. Koschei gives them a hand. They’re red-cheeked and breathless, no doubt from running the whole way.

“I’ve got to finish this first,” says Koschei, pointing at his work. “It’s giving me hell.”

“Need some help?”

“Yes, please,” says Koschei in relief.

Theta ruffles his hair. “You always procrastinate too much,” they tell him, and pick up a pen.

Then the walls are rippling, and they’re both in the Panopticon. They’re standing together in front of Rassilon. Koschei has the distinct feeling that they’re in trouble.

“I expected as much from you,” Rassilon says, looking at Koschei, “but not from you, Theta Sigma. You are more than that.”

Theta looks at Koschei and makes a face.

 _“Theta Sigma,”_ says Rassilon sharply. “You are already in trouble.”

They’re both suspended from the academy for a week, but as they walk out, heels clicking on the polished surfaces, Theta takes Koschei’s hand and whispers into his ear.

“Now we can do whatever we like for a week. Just us.”

Koschei lets go of Theta’s hand in order to hug them tightly. They return his embrace, clinging to him so hard he might have bruises. He wouldn’t mind.

As a result, Koschei is unsurprised to wake up and find himself in Theta’s sound asleep death grip. She’s half lying on top of him, her ankle hooked around his, an arm over his chest. It makes it a little hard for him to breathe, but very easy to feel - well - warm. 

She snuffles, and does that stupid scronchy thing with her nose that her face is so good at. It’s hard to remember that they’re archenemies in moments like this. He supposes he should push her away, but honestly, it’s a relief to wake up without scaring the shit out of both of them. And he can just pretend to be asleep if she wakes up.

The Doctor, meanwhile, has also just woken up. She assesses her position, and thinks she should probably disentangle herself pretty soon, but consider: the Master is _warm._

She doesn’t open her eyes. If the Master wakes up, she’ll just pretend to be asleep. 

Needless to say, they’re there for a while. She loses track of exactly how long, because human bodies don’t have the usual twelve internal timers for Time Lords. Still. It’s a while. When time seems to stand still like this, the Doctor often wonders at the gap in young Time Lords’ education at the academy. It’s not all numbers and equations, rules and contradictions: sometimes time is just the space you live in, and it’s beautiful.

A thought crosses her mind. _I wish that every morning could be like this._ And while she’s not had good luck on wishes, ever, this one feels more confident than most.

Until she remembers that she has a job, and that she’s definitely late for it.

“Fuck,” she mutters, and tries to roll out of bed.

“Hmrgh?” the Master yawns.

“Stupid humans with their stupid linear time structures and their jobs.” She wriggles her arms free and unhooks her ankle from his. “I have to go.”

The Master sighs, almost sounding disappointed.

“Go fix cars,” he mumbles, and pulls the covers over his head.

She throws her clothes on, runs a hand through her hair and grabs a box of cereal to eat on the way. She’s halfway out the door when she remembers that she doesn’t trust the Master, because he’s her archenemy, and evil, and probably plotting to take over the world again.

“Um. Will you be alright on your own?” she asks.

The Master’s head pops up.

“I’ll follow the three Ns,” he says, grinning. “Don’t worry.”

She should worry. She should really, really worry. But she’s late and she can still feel his warmth on her skin and more than anything, she wants to trust him.

“You better,” she says, and then shuts the door behind her.

For the first time since arriving on earth, the Master is alone. Truly alone. He sits up in his pyjamas and looks around the room. This is the part where he’s supposed to sneak off and find an alien race to form a coalition with. He knows that. The Doctor knows that.

Instead he gets dressed, stuffs a handful of cereal in his mouth, and calls Mary-Anne.

An hour and two harrowing bus rides later, the Master knocks on her front door tentatively.

“It’s open!”

He tries the knob, which twists beneath his hand, and steps inside. The first thing he notices are the stuffed animals - they’re _everywhere._ Perched on the bookshelves, crowded underneath a table… There’s even a teddy bear straddling the lampshade, and the Master has no idea what to do with that information.

“Come through, dear,” calls Mary-Anne, and the Master follows her voice down the hallway and through a doorway lined with beads. He looks around the room, feeling his eyes widen at the sight.

“Glorious,” he breathes.

It’s the kind of lab he aspires to create. The walls are lined with boxes, colour-coded and neatly labelled, apart from one that has loops of wire hung in orderly rows of ascending thickness. There are tools laid out on the huge desk in the middle, all the different sizes you could possibly want, and an oscilloscope with the nicest display the Master has seen in a long time. Mary-Anne is sitting at the soldering station, and fuck, he’s had dreams about a soldering station like that. It has little slots to hang the iron and a wee sponge to wipe off the solder blobs and a stand with six degrees of freedom.

“It’s good, isn’t it,” says Mary-Anne, looking up from her work and smiling. “Makes a wonderful hideaway spot, too.”

“Where did you get all of this?”

The Master walks around the room, trailing his hands over the boxes, investigating all the components.

“I told you I ran an electronics store, didn’t I, dear? Now, I’m sure you’re dying to get started, but there are some rules.” She picks up a small manila folder and holds it out to him. “Sign this, please.”

The contract is impressive in detail. So impressive that the Master is almost jealous. In short, if he breaks things, he has to pay for it, and in return for using the lab, he’s the designated tea-and-biscuits fetcher for Mary-Anne. He signs it with a flourish and hands it back to her.

“Well, then,” she smiles, her eyes twinkling. “I’m looking forward to seeing what you do.”

The Master grins and grabs a pencil and a sheet of paper. It’s time to get started.

Somewhere a few blocks away, in a garage, the Doctor notices absolutely nothing. It’s important to mention that she notices absolutely nothing, because in the usual state of things, she would. If she were in her Time Lord body, she would.

What she doesn’t notice are the threads of time, pulling a little closer around her.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Part of the shower scene is inspired by Bart and Ken from Dirk Gently’s Holistic Detective Agency (it’s a fucking great show, by the way, time travel, mysteries and shit, brilliant characters, nuanced relationships, 11/10 recommend) in [this scene](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-pffpa1ARSA). Honestly, that show really helped shape my sense of humour, so I should credit it for this whole fic.
> 
> A huge thanks to everyone who's commented so far, you all brighten my day, you wonderful wonderful people 💖💖💖 and thank you to the people on discord who've helped me brainstorm lots of stuff for this!! I was going to go on a slightly different tack with the Master's inventing, including him watching infomercials for ideas, but it didn't fit in the end. I hope it's a fun mental image, anyway.
> 
> (also: yes, we have a chapter count! yes, I have actually made a vague plan! yes, it will probably change!)


	7. Food Pyramid

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Dr. Li had prescribed them something called _paracetamol._ The Master pulls the package out of his pocket and pops a couple of the pills.
> 
> “What do you do with these?” he asks. “Crush them and snort?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Content warning for blood and vague description of period stuff (yeah, you know what’s coming up).  
> Sorry this one's a little late! I keep getting caught up in one-shot ideas to write. Hope you enjoy, stay safe, sane and home everyone 💖💖💖
> 
> RIP Firefly, 2002-2003, you deserved better

For the next fortnight, life goes on. And that’s really, really weird.

It’s not as if the Doctor is  _ totally  _ unaccustomed to routine. She has routines sometimes. They go roughly like this:

  1. Pick up her fam.
  2. Avoid talking about feelings long enough to get where they want to go.
  3. Leave the TARDIS.
  4. Don’t die.
  5. Get back in the TARDIS.
  6. Put any residual feelings from step four in a tiny box in her head and repress it forever.



But in actuality, the routine is never so simple as that. It doesn’t always go in order, and the timescale can be as little as a few minutes or as much as several months, and step number four is a jumble of fifty different steps that dance around each other like contradictory space-time fairies.

Okay. Fine.

The Doctor is totally unaccustomed to routine. 

And the idea that she now has something as quaint as a  _ daily linear-time routine,  _ that she’s formed said routine with the Master, and moreover, that she doesn’t feel suffocated and trapped underneath the weight of her own existence? That idea is  _ terrifying.  _

Has whatever changed her to human done something to her fundamental nature of self? How else could she be content to do the same thing, day after day, over and over?

That’s not strictly true, though, is it? It’s not the same thing, day after day. It’s the same structure of moments, but the moments themselves change. The moments themselves are unique - she would go so far to say that most of them are beautiful. In a mundane, domestic, terribly human sort of way. 

Take her job, for example. She’s becoming quite fond of Brian since he’s proven himself willing to learn. And he has been learning a  _ lot _ . She’s trying not to invent things that haven’t been invented yet, but she likes it when Brian gets so overwhelmed that he has to sit down, close his eyes, and count to ten. So maybe she’s invented transparent solar panel windows a couple of decades early. So what?

And then there’s everything before and after her job, which is to say: and then there’s the Master.

She usually gets home in the early evening, at which time the Master is, unfailingly, sprawled across the couch fast asleep (he’s become extremely fond of naps). Apparently it ‘soothes his soul’, whatever that means. At some point he wakes up and they eat (they’ve branched out from cereal, mainly because they got sick of it, and now include frozen eclairs, macarons of every colour, and whipped cream straight from the can on their menu).

Then comes the best (worst) part of the night: watching human television. They chew their way through all the science fiction they can get their hands on, pausing in the middle of episodes to make fun of the polystyrene-bolstered aliens and screaming  _ TIME TRAVEL DOESN’T WORK LIKE THAT  _ because, inevitably, it doesn’t. The Master likes  _ Star Trek _ the best because of all the pent-up sexual tension, while the Doctor’s favourite show is  _ Firefly,  _ simply because it’s an underdog and didn’t get enough time to shine. She knows what that feels like.

Then, once all the stupid human hygiene routines are out of the way, they go to bed, and the mood shifts. They call each other  _ Theta _ and  _ Koschei _ when the lights are out, and it makes the Doctor feel like she’s a kid again. Like she understands him.

She has to remind herself daily that she doesn’t.

The Doctor is always first up in the morning, bouncing around the room in her rush to work, eating crunchy instant noodles straight out of the packet. She’s lucky if the Master is even awake by the time she leaves, though sometimes she gets a groan of acknowledgement when she says goodbye.

She still doesn’t know where the Master goes during the day. Not that she’s asked. If she doesn’t ask, then he won’t tell her, and then she gets to not be disappointed for longer. She knows he’s working on something, but what, and how, and where… It’s better if she doesn’t ask. Isn’t it?

The Master’s not the only one who can have secret projects, anyway.

It wasn’t a conscious decision to start making a vortex manipulator. She just noticed some bits and pieces lying around the garage, and put them together, and before she knew it, she’d accidentally made a wee time-hopper which could’ve taken her to the end of the week and back. She keeps working on it when she doesn’t have anything else to do, with a vague idea of being able to skip ahead to 2020.

If the Master told  _ her  _ what  _ he  _ was doing, she’d tell him. She would.

You’d think that with the Doctor being so unused to routine, she wouldn’t be surprised when it’s finally broken. But she is. It’s the twentieth day of their time on earth when it happens. Specifically, the morning. Specifically, when she gets out of bed.

Specifically, the small pool of blood that’s in said bed.

“Koschei? Kosch!” She seizes the covers and rips them off him, running her hands over his stomach, his heart, all the vital areas, checking for the source. Stupid, stupid,  _ stupid _ human bodies and their fragility and no regeneration -

“What?” the Master mumbles, rubbing his eyes. “Theta?”

“Are you hurt?” she demands, pushing his chin up to investigate his neck, finding it smooth and unblemished.

“Nuh… don’t think so.” He stares at her hands, raising an eyebrow. “Any reason for the, uh, morning check-up?”

“Where did the blood come from, then?”

The Master props himself up on his elbows, his eyes widening when he sees the stain. As the Doctor relaxes, assured that he isn’t the source of blood, he becomes panicked, and starts to pat her down in the same way she did to him.

“No, don’t worry,  _ I’m  _ not - oh.”

They see the stain on her pants at the same time.

“What did you do?” the Master screeches, scrambling to his feet.

“I don’t know!”

The Doctor tentatively pokes the bloody spot, which is awkward, because it’s right - well -  _ there. _ She can’t feel anything really painful. Definitely no wounds.

“What in the…?” she mutters.

“Why is it right - ugh -  _ there?” _ the Master asks, waving his hand in the vague direction of her crotch area.

“I don’t know!”

“Do you think it could be - you know - coming _ out of…”  _

He trails off, which is just as well, because the Doctor thinks she might smack him in the face if he finishes his sentence. As it is, she runs to the bathroom, slams the door, and tries desperately to ascertain the source of the bleeding.

“Well?” the Master’s voice comes from the other side of the door.

“Your theory is correct,” the Doctor announces, screwing up her face. 

“And is this  _ normal _ for humans?”

“How the fuck should I know? It’s not  _ stopping, _ there’s more blood. Fuck. Fuck.” She’s less worried now she knows it’s not some fatal wound, but the anxiety is starting to build up again as she realizes this is an ongoing problem.

“What can I do?” the Master asks. She can hear the desperation in his tone.

“Um,” she says, holding up her ruined pyjama pants. “A change of clothes would be nice.”

She gets cleaned up and dressed in the clothes the Master hands her through the door, sticking a rolled-up hand towel in her knickers to absorb the blood that is, undeniably, annoyingly, stupidly still flowing. She notices that something below her stomach feels strange and achy, and allows herself exactly a minute to hyperventilate before facing the Master again. It’s a good plan because as soon as she opens the door he’s right in her face.

“Do you feel anything strange?” he demands, his hands coming up to brush the sides of her elbows. “Are you in pain?”

“There’s something…” She winces at a nasty twinge, rubbing her hand over the spot just above her trouser clasp.

“What? Is it bad? On a scale of one to twenty eight, how bad?”

“Not that bad. Maybe… sixteen.” As soon as she says it, the pain gets worse. “Twenty.”

The Master bites his lip, his eyes fluttering over her stomach. 

“We should get help. Can you walk?”

She nods, brushing off the arm he tries to sling around her waist.

“There’s nothing wrong with my legs,” she tells him, scowling. 

The Master doesn’t retort, just keeps glancing sideways at her, his eyes round with worry.

“Do we go to a hospital? Do humans have ambulances? If I yell at them will they take you in a helicopter?”

The Doctor rolls her eyes as they make their way across the grass in front of the house. The Master’s walking too close, shadowing her every step, hands slightly outstretched as if he expects her to fall.

“I don’t need a  _ helicopter. _ Or an ambulance. Or a hospital.”

“What do you need, then?”

He’s walked right into it, honestly. He should know better. But it doesn’t stop her from feeling a little guilty at taking advantage of him when he’s so obviously worried.

“I need a doctor.”

He groans and shoves her, then immediately steadies her, his eyes going wide, his hands becoming oddly gentle.

“You - ugh. Sorry.”

She rolls her eyes and shoves him back. He turns his big brown kicked-puppy eyes on her, and she hates that he can do that, no matter what regeneration. Though this one is particularly effective.

“Let’s just go,” she sighs, and tugs him along.

The bus driver, who by now knows the strange British newcomers quite well, directs them to a doctor’s clinic on the outskirts of town. It stands alone in the middle of a concrete carpark brushed with orange dust, which has a grand total of three cars parked.

The Master is not impressed. How can this tiny building possibly have all the equipment needed for medical consults? Unless humans have figured out dimensional transcendality, which he knows for a fact they haven’t. Useless creatures.

“Oi,” says the Doctor. “They’re doing their best.”

“Are they?” the Master asks. “Really?”

“Most of them.”

“Hmm.” 

He holds the clinic door open for her, then realizes what he’s done and stares at his hand so hard he thinks it might drop off from the shame.

“You coming?” the Doctor asks, raising an eyebrow.

“Yes,” he says too quickly, and stalks past her in an attempt to reinforce his position as the Evil One.

His position as the Evil One is lost, however, when the receptionist asks what  _ relation _ he is to the Doctor. He looks back at her, words presenting themselves to him only to get stuck in his throat. 

“It’s not a deep question,” the receptionist says tersely, snapping her fingers at him. “I just need to know if you’re her emotional support person.”

The Master opens his mouth, then shuts it quickly. The receptionist rolls her eyes and leans to the side to make eye contact with the Doctor.

“Well? Do you want this guy to sit in on your appointment?”

The Master bristles at being addressed as  _ this guy, _ but his comeback dies in his mouth when he feels the Doctor’s arm slip through his.

“Yeah, he’s my - er - emotional support person. Thanks.”

The receptionist looks thoroughly unimpressed as she turns back to her computer, muttering under her breath, “I don’t get paid enough for this shit.”

The Doctor’s arm tightens around his, and the Master’s brain conveniently goes blank again, any argument he might have started getting washed clean away with the Doctor’s sleeve brushing his hand.

“You’re lucky. Doctor Li has a free slot in five minutes. Please have a seat while you wait.” The receptionist smiles widely and fakely at them.

The Doctor smiles back (not widely, not fakely, the Master notes) and pulls him into one of the little chairs. They’re all flat edges, like someone wanted to make a cube instead of a chair, and they don’t allow for easy arm linkage. The Master almost mourns the loss of the Doctor’s arm around his, but he checks himself before doing anything of the sort.

“How do you feel?” he asks, the worry that had dissipated with distraction coming back with a vengeance.

She wriggles in her seat, frowning.

“Weird. Still hurts. And my head is all… I don’t know. Floaty?”

The Master bites the inside of his cheek.

“Are you sure we don’t need to go somewhere a bit more - you know - better?”

The Doctor folds her arms.

“Look, we’re here now, and they’ll tell us if we need to go somewhere better.”

The Master doesn’t like it, and he won’t pretend to, either.

“You trust humans too much.”

But the Doctor is distracted by something over his shoulder. He feels vaguely insulted, and twists in his chair to see what could have possibly been more interesting than him. It’s a poster titled  _ The Food Pyramid. _ He looks back at the Doctor, incredulous, but she’s totally focussed on it.

He waves a hand in front of her face, but her expression doesn’t change.

“Doctor,” he says impatiently, and then when she still doesn’t reply, louder, “Doctor!”

“Is this for real?” she asks, seemingly to herself.

“What?”

“The - the food pyramid! Look at it, really look!”

The Master sighs, but turns to look at it again. Really look. After a few moments, he understands why the Doctor’s so fixated on it.

“What,” he says flatly.

“Look, there’s cereal on the bottom, and we’ve been eating lots of that. That’s good, right?”

“But look at where chips are! Eat a few?  _ A few? _ And all the - all the sweet things. I don’t understand. Why would they be sold so - so widely if you’re not supposed to eat them in quantity?”

“Maybe it’s a joke.” The Doctor sounds about as panicked as the Master feels. “Maybe -”

But before she can go on, a short woman in a white lab coat comes into the waiting room, looks at her clipboard, and does a double take before calling, “Um. Doctor?”

Said Doctor stands up, gives the human doctor a little wave, and she and the Master follow the human doctor into a small room. It’s not anything like the doctor’s offices the Master is used to - not that he’s been to many, being an intergalactic criminal and all.

“Please have a seat,” says the doctor (the human doctor), indicating two blue plastic chairs. “What can I help you with today?”

She goes to the sink in the corner and washes her hands thoroughly with soap while she talks.

“Well, there’s two things,” the Doctor (the real doctor) begins. “And just a general disclaimer that our health knowledge is not, you know, the best.”

“That’s perfectly alright,” says the human doctor, smiling. She dries her hands. “That’s my job. I’ll tell you anything you want to know. And just before you start, actually, what would you like me to call you? It just says Doctor on here.”

“Yeah, that’s my name. What’s yours?”

“I - um - okay. Oh, you can call me Susan.” She comes to sit in the chair at the desk.

“Brilliant. Right. Well. First thing - I’m sort of bleeding in the, you know, down there… bit. A lot.”

The Master tenses, studying her face carefully for her response. She doesn’t look alarmed, though, just genuinely confused.

“There’s blood coming out of your vagina?”

“Correct.”

“Does it look different than your normal period?”

“My normal what?”

“Your… period. Your menstrual flow. You know, your… monthly cycle?” Susan frowns. “How old are you?”

“Do I have to answer that?”

“I mean, you’re not under any obligation to. But if you’re over eighteen, and this is the first time this has ever happened to you, we might need to check things out.”

The Doctor glances at the Master, but he’s got nothing. How can you possibly explain to humans that you’ve only been in what looks like an adult human body for approximately two weeks?

“Could you just tell me what you would expect to happen, with respect to… the bleeding, and stuff? For a normal human who looks about my age?” she asks.

Susan nods, looking relieved. “That I can do. Alright. It’s a part of the female reproductive system. Essentially, it’s a monthly cycle, though it can be disturbed occasionally, and… we would advise you to seek help if you’re more than two months late. So, each month…”

She goes on to explain all about menstrual cycles and all the nasty things they entail in great detail. The Doctor is fascinated, but at several points she pulls disgusted faces, and the Master doesn’t make any effort to try to hide his. It’s just so complicated. And  _ messy. _

“Do you have any questions?” Susan asks.

“Um, yeah,” says the Doctor. “What about the male reproductive system? Does  _ he  _ have to deal with any of this?” 

She points at the Master, who had been about to ask the exact same question. He’s terrified, frankly. This whole bleeding-for-a-quarter-of-the-month thing is really fucking weird. Who knows what could be in store for him?

“Oh, no. No, men don’t have reproductive cycles. Their biology is very simple.”

The Master would be offended if he wasn’t so relieved.

“Thank fuck for that,” he mutters.

“But that’s not fair!” the Doctor insists.

Susan laughs. “Tell me about it. But really, how can you not have known this? Or something like this? I can’t believe that you’re young enough that this is your first period.”

The Doctor bites her lip. “It’s… complicated. Suffice to say, with all of this -” she waves her hand at the diagram of a uterus Susan has been showing them, “- I don’t think we need to worry.”

Susan doesn’t look entirely convinced, but she nods.

“If you’re sure. Now, what was the second thing you wanted to ask about?”

“Oh yeah. So there’s this weird poster in your foyer with something called the food pyramid. I just wanted to know if that was, you know, real.”

Susan has been very good at keeping her facial cues small up until this point. Now, though, her face goes through the five stages of grief quite clearly, ending on resigned acceptance with a deep sigh.

“It’s real,” she says in a small voice. “Nutrition is real.”

Half an hour later, they’re walking out of the clinic, both feeling entirely demotivated.

“I thought we were doing really well at being human,” says the Doctor, hanging her head. “And now I find out we’ve mucked up the absolute basics. I mean, I thought vegetables were more for wearing than anything else. They’re too green to be worth eating. Aren’t they?”

“Apparently not.” The Master groans. “Does this mean I have to choose something other than cereal in the supermarket?”

“I think so.”

“I won’t do it. I won’t.”

The Doctor pats him on the shoulder. “I’ll come with you. We’ll get through it together.”

He wrinkles his nose at the prospect.

“Come on,” she says, “At least you don’t have to go through whatever the hell  _ I _ do - ahhhhh. Ahhhhhhhh. Ow.”

“What is it?” 

She holds a hand to the lower half of her stomach, face contorting in agony, and the Master stands over her, hands hovering awkwardly.

“Doctor? Doctor? What do I do?”

“It’s fine,” she hisses. “She said it was painful. Have you got some of that - you know - the painkiller stuff?”

Susan had prescribed them something she called  _ paracetamol, _ which they’d then collected from the tiny pharmacy adjoining the clinic. The Master pulls the package out of his pocket and pops a couple of the pills.

“What do you do with these?” he asks. “Crush them and snort?”

_ “Swallow,” _ the Doctor says, and grabs them, tossing them into her mouth. “Are you really still obsessed with snorting things?”

“I just think it’s the most efficient and optimal means of - hey, hey.”

Another wave of pain seems to hit her, and she grabs at his hand so tightly it hurts.

“Let’s go home, okay?” the Master says, guiding her towards the bus stop. It makes him feel unimaginably weird to be the one holding her for comfort, to have her relax into his grip.

“Okay,” she mutters.

He feels a faint pressure on his shoulder on the bus ride home, and looks over to see the Doctor leaning her head on him. Her hair tickles his nose. It makes the Master’s stomach feel warm for a reason that eludes him entirely.


	8. Supermarkets Can Be Terrifying

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> It’s silly, because faces don’t matter to Time Lords like they do to humans. How can they, when faces change so often? But looking at the Doctor’s face now, a strand of hair caught in her mouth and faint smile lines around her eyes, the Master gets a strange feeling. It’s a feeling like something huge is towering over him, but he can’t see anything more than the outline.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Is this me projecting about how stressful supermarket trips are under pandemic restrictions? Maybe. Is this also me projecting about period pain? Yes. That's it. That's the whole chapter.

The Doctor calls Brian as soon as they’re home.

“Where are ya?” he demands.

“I’m sick,” she says, “Sorry.”

“Ya looked fine yesterday.”

They still have problems with this sometimes. Sexism is a deeply rooted beast, and try as she might, Brian is just less likely to believe things she says than a male-presenting human.

“I’m bleeding out of my vagina, Brian.”

“... Uh. Crikey.” There’s a long silence, in which the Doctor waits for Brian to say something else. He doesn’t.

“I’ll be back on Monday. Promise.”

“Yeah, nah, a’ight. You, uh, take care.”

“Course. You too. Bye!” 

She puts the phone down with a click. It’s a good sound, that putting-down-the-phone-click, and one that humanity will sadly lose in the next ten years. On a normal day she’d convey all of this to the Master, and demonstrate the various tone and timbre of phone clicks, but today is not a normal day. Today is a  _ terrible _ day.

She hurls herself facedown on the couch, realises that stretching herself out was a stupid idea, and wriggles onto her side in order to curl up.

“The pain has not been killed,” she grumbles, taking the paracetamol out of her pocket and inspecting it. “Maybe it’s faulty.”

“Probably, knowing humans,” says the Master from where he’s perched on the table.

The Doctor’s too tired and sore to argue this point for the hundredth time, so she doesn’t.

“Um. How are you feeling?” the Master asks after a beat of silence.

She feels like words would be too heavy to leave her mouth, so she just groans.

“Can I… Do you need anything?”

She groans again.

“The human said heat helps.” He pauses to bring his hands together beneath his chin, looking thoughtful. “Aren’t human bodies susceptible to heat?”

“Volcanoes, yes,” she sighs. She’s too familiar with that example. “Sunlight… also yes. Look, I don’t think it has to be in huge quantities.”

The Master taps his lip with a finger. It’s the sort of thing he used to do in a past body, one with black leather gloves and eyebrows that looked as if they wanted to stab their enemies dead.

“Can you think of an example?” he asks.

The Doctor tries to think of all the warm things she’s known while she’s been here. Tea would burn her. Hot water from the shower, on the other hand, could work. And there’s another sensation that niggles at the back of her brain, something soft and yet solid…

“You,” she blurts, and immediately regrets it. “I mean, um. Not you. Your hands, or… you know, whatever.”

“My hands?” The Master holds out his hands in front of him as if seeing them for the first time. “Are they warm?”

“Yeah,” she mumbles, pressing her also-warm face into the couch. “But you don’t have to -”

The Master is at her side in an instant, his hands hovering inches from her stomach.

“This isn’t because I feel sorry for you,” he says. “It’s because you deserve better than human painkillers that don’t work.”

“I know. But you don’t have -”

“Show me where,” he interrupts.

She doesn’t dare meet his eyes, so she keeps her face pressed as much as she can into the couch cushion while she takes his hand and guides it to the base of her stomach. It’s not a huge relief, but it is something, and it’s faster-acting than the painkillers. She sighs and feels her body un-tense a little.

“Is it better?”

“Yeah.”

“Good.”

She chances a glance at him as he manoeuvres himself into a sitting position next to the couch without jostling his hands, and rests his head next to her shoulder.

“Thanks,” she mutters reluctantly.

“You’re welcome,” he says, and it’s as soft as his skin against hers. She meets his eyes for a second, the gentle brown close-up threatening to overwhelm her, before tearing her gaze away. Her eye catches on the stack of videos in the corner they haven’t returned yet.

“Hey, Master?”

“Yes, Doctor?” She can hear the smile in his voice.

“I know it’s still technically morning, but…”

“But?”

“Do you wanna watch  _ Star Trek?” _

They watch episodes until the sun is high in the sky, the Doctor curled up on the couch and the Master sitting on the ground somewhat awkwardly in order for his hands to still soothe her cramps and for him to still be able to see the screen.

Somewhere in the middle of it, the Doctor realizes her cramps have almost entirely faded. Either her body has decided to stop hating her or the painkillers aren’t entirely useless. She doesn’t tell the Master that, though, because it’s weirdly nice to feel his hands there and she doesn’t want it to stop. Is that weird? Touch isn’t a huge part of Time Lord culture, but she and the Master have always been the exception for each other. So why can’t she just enjoy the feeling of her best enemy’s hands against her skin?

“I’m hungry,” groans the Master, interrupting her train of thought. “Are you hungry?”

“I’m… actually not, really.”

The Master frowns at her.

“You’re always hungry. Are you sure you’re -”

“I’m  _ fine. _ You know, we should try and eat the food pyramid today. Or at least do better.”

The Master groans dramatically and pushes his face into the couch.

“Are you going to make me go to the supermarket?  _ Alone?” _

She sighs. Without guidance in the supermarket the Master is like a wild librarian. She’s seen him sorting the biscuits into alphabetical order, for goodness’ sake. But she’s more tired than she knew was possible, and she doesn’t want to be caught out if her cramps get bad again.

“Please?” she asks, turning her head sideways to look at him. 

His face is a lot closer than she estimated, but she soldiers on and does her best at imitating his puppy eyes. He looks thrown. It makes her warm with satisfaction.

“I don’t know if I can do it,” he admits, not breaking her gaze. “You know I can get a bit - well - stuck.”

She worries her lower lip between her teeth, trying to think of a solution. It’s difficult if she can’t be there in person with him. And then she has an idea.

“Do you still have that earpiece thing?” she asks eagerly.

“What, the one I made for emergency spy missions?”

“No, a piece of your actual ear. Yes, that one.”

“You’re not funny, and yes, I still have it.”

“Brilliant.” She grins. “We’re gonna need a good mission title.”

**Operation Obtain Nutritious Vegetables**

_ Time elapsed 00:00 _

_ STAGE ONE: BRIEFING _

“This is the rough map of the supermarket. Five aisles, a deli section at the back, and a weird room off the edge for bread. Got that?”

“Got it.”

“Quick test. In which aisle is the cauliflower located?”

“Trick question. The cauliflower is in the open produce section at the front of the supermarket.”

“Can you be more specific?”

The Master closes his eyes and runs himself through his internal memory map. They’d pieced together what they could remember, and he remembered the Doctor saying the cauliflower was…

“It’s hiding behind the potatoes,” he recites from memory. “Which are directly left of the front entrance.”

The Doctor nods and gives him an appraising look.

“I think you’re ready for the game plan,” she says solemnly.

The Master draws himself up, puffing out his chest.

“I’m ready.”

_ Time elapsed 04:02 _

_ STAGE TWO: TRANSIT _

“Can you hear me?” the Doctor whispers into her microphone. She’d put all the equipment together herself, so she was fairly sure it’d work, but the Master wasn’t saying anything.

“Master?” 

Radio silence.

_ “CAN YOU HEAR ME?”  _ she yells, and a muffled squeak sounds down the line.

“Yes!” the Master’s scratchy speaker voice hisses. “Now shut up! I look like I’m talking to myself.”

The Doctor begins to smile. This is a golden opportunity. She has a direct link to the Master’s earpiece, and  _ he can’t talk back _ . It’s enough to take her mind off her incessant cramping for a minute.

“Oh, I know  _ you _ can’t talk,” she says smugly, “But  _ I _ can. Did I ever tell you about the time I met Ned the turtle? A fine turtle, he was. Ambidextrous, actually. He had this incredible trick he’d do with a spoon and bottle of rum…”

_ Time elapsed 27:23 _

_ STAGE THREE: SEARCH INITIATION _

The Master is relieved when the bus ride ends, because he can finally hiss at the Doctor to,  _ “Shut. Up.” _

“Oh, are you there? I’ve got the list here. First is carrots. Have you got them yet?”

“I’m not actually in the shop yet, give me a minute.”

He takes a trolley from the bay. The handle is sticky, and he rubs it with the sleeve of his coat a few times, which makes a marginal improvement.

“Carrots!” says the Doctor. “I won’t say it twice.”

The Master sighs. “You just did.”

“Are you in the shop yet?”

The Master flexes his hands on the trolley handle, feeling a pinch of anxiety at the base of his ribcage.  _ Just stick to the plan, and you’ll be fine,  _ he tells himself. The Doctor will be reading out everything he needs in his ear, and there’s not even that many people in the shop.

“If I don’t talk for a while -”

“I’ll keep yelling at you, don’t worry,” the Doctor reassures him. “Just try not to look at all the labels. And it doesn’t matter if we don’t get the optimal amount of groceries for the price. Okay?”

“Okay.”

“Go on, then.” Even through the tinny speaker, her voice is softer than usual, like a fluffy blanket around his shoulders. It helps more than he cares to admit.

The Master sets his jaw and pushes the trolley through the supermarket entrance, arriving in the arena of his first challenge.

The produce section.

“Carrots,” says the Doctor for the third time. “Orange and long. I don’t know how big they are, though. How many do you think we need? Seventy?”

The Master scans the room for orange and locates the corresponding objects.

“I think seventy is too many.”

“Just one then.”

The Master takes one singular carrot and puts it into the trolley.

“What’s next?”

“Broccoli. Is that real? It can’t be real. It looks like a tiny tree…”

They work their way through the list item by item, only hitting a few snags. The Master avoids trying to read the nutrition information on every single box, though he does nearly slip up when he gets to the tinned fruit. He still doesn’t understand what  _ lite  _ means.

“It doesn’t matter if it’s light or heavy!” the Doctor insists.

“No, it’s not light, it’s  _ lite.” _

“Oh, thanks for clearing that up. Just take it, I’m sure it’s fine.”

The Master doesn’t like it, but he puts the can of lite tinned peaches into the trolley, glaring at it just to make sure it knows its place.

“Is that everything?” he asks his earpiece.

“Yes, I think so. You know, I’m sure it wouldn’t hurt just to check if there are any mini macaroons left -”

“The whole point of this is to eat a healthy human diet.”

“But I’m  _ sick.” _

“You’re not sick. You’re -”

“In  _ terrible pain.” _

Did she learn this from him? He doesn’t know whether to be annoyed or impressed.

“Fine.  _ Fine.  _ I'll look for the mini macaroons, but then I’m done. Okay?”

“Okay,” she says agreeably.

It doesn’t take him long to find them in the confectionary aisle, as many times as they’ve got them before.

“Mini macaroons acquired,” he reports back. “Over.”

“Oh, are we saying over now? Alright.”

The Master waits.

“Hello?” the Doctor says.

“You’re supposed to say over at the end of your transmission,” he sighs. “Every transmission. Over.”

“Oh. Alright.”

After another three-second silence, it becomes clear the Doctor is not going to be able to follow basic walkie-talkie protocol.

“Never mind,” he mutters. “I’m going to check these out.”

_ Time elapsed 45:02 _

_ STAGE FOUR: CHECKOUT _

It occurs to the Master, as he’s piling swedes on top of carrots on top of brussel sprouts, that they haven’t thought about how they’re going to store all the food. Or how long it lasts. All the food on Gallifrey has been genetically modified to be time-impervious, and somehow, the Master doubts that humans have made that step.

“Excuse me,” he says to the checkout person. “Do you have a refund policy? On vegetables?”

“Don’t get a refund!” the Doctor squawks through the earpiece. “We need those for - you know - not getting scurvy!”

The Master takes off the earpiece and shoves it into his pocket.

“Um,” says the checkout person, biting their lip. “I… don’t know?”

“That makes two of us. How about cereal?”

“How much cereal?”

Flashes of Kellogg’s and Sanitarium haunt the Master’s vision.

“Too much,” he whispers.

The checkout person pauses their scanning to regard him.

“This is the weirdest conversation I’ve had all day,” they say. “Thanks.”

_ Time elapsed 52:54 _

_ STAGE FIVE: COMPLETION _

The Master exits the supermarket with a trolley piled high full of nutritious food, and smiles as the sun hits his face. He can taste the sweet taste of victory. 

_ “MASTER!” _ a tiny voice screams from his pocket.

“Fuck,” he mutters and jams the earpiece back in, using his elbows to keep hold of the trolley. “Doctor? Are you alright?”

_ “I’m _ alright. Are you alright?”

“Why were you screaming?”

“Because I’m in pain, I’m bored, and I have nothing else to do. Are you done?”

“Yeah, I’m done.”

“Great. Hey, Master?”

“Yeah?”

“Thanks. And I’m proud of you.”

The Master’s cheeks get very hot. He thinks it must be because of the sun. With his mission complete, the Doctor quiet, and actual food to take home, he allows himself one second to feel good about himself.

The Master wasn’t expecting the Doctor to be waiting for him  _ at the door _ when he got home, but he thought, given the trial he had just undergone and succeeded in, there might be just a little hint of a welcoming committee to greet him. But the house is silent, and even when he knocks at the door, the Doctor doesn’t come to let him in. He twists the key in the lock and pushes his way in, setting the groceries on the table and kicking the door shut behind him.

Then he sees her.

She’s passed out on the couch, her face pushed into a pillow with her mouth half-open. Her knuckles just brush the floor where her arm is hanging down. She breathes in and out steadily, a little half-snore easing out of her occasionally. The room didn’t feel quiet when the Master entered it before, but once he sees the Doctor, she seems to emanate a sort of quiet glowing peace. It steals its way somewhere deep inside the Master’s chest.

It’s silly, because faces don’t matter to Time Lords like they do to humans. How can they, when faces change so often? But looking at the Doctor’s face now, a strand of hair caught in her mouth and faint smile lines around her eyes, the Master gets a strange feeling. It’s a feeling like something huge is towering over him, but he can’t see anything more than the outline. All he knows is that it’s huge, and it’s had him in its shadow for as long as he can remember, so long that he doesn’t know what being out of the shadow is like... and that once he sees it properly, everything will change. 

It nudges against his mind gently at first, and then harder, until it threatens to overwhelm him. It’s not peace anymore, not the gentle quiet glow that had first permeated him on entering the room. The silence is ominous now, a lack of sound that must surely end, and the thing looming over him fills him with a sense of doom.

Though he’s rooted to the spot where he stands, the ground doesn’t feel solid beneath his feet. It’s slipping this way and that so that he’s always falling. He doesn’t know how to put it into words better than that, doesn’t  _ want _ to use words to capture whatever it is he’s feeling. All he wants to do is push it away.

So he does.

He balls his hands into fists, and tears his gaze away from the Doctor. He takes a deep breath, and makes the horizon stay still, wills his legs to stop trembling. He pushes it down, deep down, until the feelings, the peace, the imminent realisation, the falling, it’s all gone. 

And he’s left with a cold, empty heart and too many vegetables.


	9. Nasty, Evil Vegetables

**Summary for the Chapter:**

>   
> [image ID: Antoni from Queer Eye, saying "a sandwich is something that can actually be so personal"]

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A couple things!  
> 1\. I forgot to say, but the reason I was kind of late updating last time was partly that I was working on a video edit, which is thoschei and can be found [here](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CcejVWLeam0) if you’re interested. I have never edited before, so, you know, don't expect the world.  
> 2\. I’m part of a discord server called Best Enemies, covering all eras of thoschei, and it’s a lot of fun! There’s a few watchalongs of various episodes going on. [Join if you want to hang out!](https://discord.gg/MceYU7J) Would highly recommend! If you don't know what discord is, it's basically a place to build cute little communities in a super chill environment. It's officially my favourite place for fandom stuff. (I am also starknight on discord)  
> 3\. Thank you very much to [staryeyedgazer](https://staryeyedgazer.tumblr.com/) for betaing this chapter!  
> Okay, so it was three things. Sorry for the verbosity. Now you can read the chapter. Enjoy!

The Doctor wakes up to a familiar smell. It takes her right back to her childhood, brittle red grass rustling like a thousand wind chimes, the familiar dips and curves of her hard wooden workbench beneath her fingers, and the faint headache that always came with straining her eyes for too long. She hadn’t worked hard as a child - well, she had, but not on the right projects. Her ideas were always more interesting than the ones her teachers had, though, if a little more… explosive.

She jumps up, flipping her hair out of her face and trying to find the source of the burning.

“What is it? What’s on fire?”

The Master turns to her, holding up his hands.

“It’s okay! It’s okay. I’ve just been cooking these… mini trees.”

She peers over at the stove. There are four round dark things on it, which she knows from her experiments get very hot when you twist the dials, and on top of each one is what appears to be a small green tree.

“I think they’re called broccol-trees,” the Doctor says.

“Well,” the Master sighs. “Whatever they are, I don’t know if they’re meant for this sort of stove.”

The Doctor picks one of them up - nearly dropping it at first, then finding a less burn-y handhold - and inspects it. The areas of the vegetable that were touching the hot stove plate are black and smoking, but the rest of it appears unchanged.

“Is it cooked?” she asks.

The Master leans in to sniff it and wrinkles his nose in disgust.

“I don’t think it needs any more cooking, at least.”

“Alright. Um. How are we supposed to eat this?”

The Master takes it from her, holding it by the stalk. He bares his teeth and rips off a chunk with a loud crunch.

“How does it taste?”

He mumbles something completely unintelligible around his mouthful, rolls his eyes, and begins chewing. The Doctor can hear each chew in excruciating clarity. It takes him a full minute to be able to swallow.

“Not to go all poetic on you, but it tastes like you smell after you go for a run.”

The Doctor grabs the broccol-tree from him and nibbles at the little buds. The Master is exaggerating, of course, because nothing can smell as bad as she does after an hour of sweating in the sweltering Australian sun… but it’s still pretty bad. The charred bits probably don’t help.

“I think you did this wrong,” she says.

“So I go out, I get all the vegetables, I do my best to cook them, and you tell me  _ I’m _ the problem?”

The Doctor pretends to consider him thoughtfully, tapping a finger on her chin.

“Well… If you put it that way… Yes.”

“I’m insulted,” the Master says. “No, I’m more than insulted. The very foundation of my honour, the essence of my virtue, the - the - the  _ marrow  _ of my  _ nobility  _ has been eroded away.”

The Doctor watches him pick up another broccol-tree and hold it out towards her like it’s the handle of a sword. She has a sneaking suspicion of where this is going.

“I challenge you,” says the Master, “To a duel.”

The Doctor grins. “What do I get when I win?”

“Ha! When  _ I  _ win, you have to apologise, and thank me for doing all of the hard work.”

“Fine. But when I win, you have to make me something with vegetables that tastes good.”

“I was going to do that anyway,” the Master mutters, but then he lunges forwards with broccol-tree in hand and the Doctor is forced to duck out of the way before she gets a faceful.

“Rules?” she asks, backing into the living area for a better space.

“One hit to the neck is a win.”

A live wire of energy runs through the Doctor, anticipation flooding right to her fingertips. She and the Master circle each other, their makeshift green weapons held out in front of them. His eyes are tight and focussed, and she’s too busy watching them, because suddenly his broccol-tree is at her shoulder and she’s almost too late with her parry.

Several lumps of green fall to the floor. The Doctor doubts whether these vegetables are really designed for parrying.

Regardless, she wastes no time with her counterattack, hacking through the air at the Master, but he jumps up onto the couch to avoid it, and she brings her weapon back in time to block his next blow. In a desperate move, she tries to jab at the back of his knee to make him fall over, but it seems that broccol-trees aren’t designed for that either, their stalks not rigid enough.

“Tired yet?” the Master taunts, feinting a blow at her cheek.

“You wish,” she hisses. “Stay  _ still _ so I can hit you -”

He jumps back onto the floor, and his weapon brushes against her shoulder. It’s too close to defeat for her taste. She backs away, stalling for time as he advances, racking her brain for something that might give her an edge. 

A cramp twinges low in her gut, not nearly as bad as before, but… if the Master can act, why can’t she?

“Ugh,” she groans, falling to her knees and curling around her stomach. “Owwwww.” 

She hears the Master’s broccol-tree fall to the floor with a thud, and then he’s hovering over her, his hand on her shoulder.

“Doctor? Are you alright? Do you need more -”

“Aha!” she yells, charging up and unbalancing him. He falls to the floor, and she’s leaning over him with her broccol-tree at his throat before he has the chance to react.

She taps the vegetable lightly against his throat.

“That’s cheating,” he says indignantly.

“That’s strategy,” the Doctor replies smugly. “No rules against emotional manipulation. Not with you, anyway.”

The Master pushes the broccol-tree away, which should feel like an angry gesture, but the Doctor’s been reading him long enough to know when he’s angry. Right now, he’s not.

“Let me up and I’ll try make something better,” he says. He’s clearly trying to sound pissed, but it somehow comes out as genuine. It makes her feel guilty, because he  _ has _ done all the work today.

“Thanks for going shopping, and getting all the vegetables, and trying to cook them,” the Doctor says in a rush. “I know I didn’t have to say it, but, I just, I thought I should. And I’m thankful. To you. So.”

The Master’s lips part slightly in surprise, and the Doctor can’t manage to tear her gaze away.

“Thanks,” he says, his face lifting into a smile. “It wasn’t really any trouble.”

The Doctor continues to stare at him. Something tightens in her chest, but in a good way.

“Um,” says the Master. “Can you let me up now?”

“Right,” she says in a daze. “Right! Yes. Of course.” 

She scrambles off of him, trying not to look at his face. She fails. It’s not her fault his face is suddenly very… look-able.

“D’you want to help?” the Master asks.

“Yes,” says the Doctor too quickly, before she’s fully comprehended the question.

But the Master smiles at her, and something tightens in her stomach (also in a good way), so she thinks she can’t have gone too far wrong.

The next day, more bets get made, the kitchen heats up, and before they know it they’re trying to beat each other to having finished eating an entire raw onion in one go. This incident inevitably ends up with them crying on the floor. It’s clear that they’re not going to get anywhere with this whole vegetable-cooking thing without some outside assistance.

That’s how the Master finds himself in a secondhand bookshop, abandoned temporarily by the Doctor, who spotted a big book about telescopes a few aisles back. He peers at the books in front of him, unsure of what might be appropriate. Humans wearing aprons smile up out of the covers, with captions like  _ How to Feed a Family For Less  _ or  _ Baking the Day Better.  _ There’s nothing titled  _ Your First Time Cooking With Vegetables. _

The Master doesn’t notice the woman standing behind him until she clears her throat, and he jumps, turning around.

“Sorry, dear,” she says, smiling up at him. “But you look a bit lost. Do you need a hand?”

“Um,” says the Master, unsure of how to navigate this particular social situation. “I - yes, actually.”

“New to cooking?”

He nods, grateful, and her eyes twinkle.

“There’s nothing that helps you to learn like having someone to cook for, and there’s no time to do it like today. You’ll want something simple, like… hmmm. How about this?”

She pulls a book from the shelf, and holds it up to him. It’s titled  _ Food for Flatters. _

“I’m not a flatter,” he says. He doesn’t think he is, anyway. What  _ is _ a flatter?

“No matter. This has some lovely simple recipes, and it’s designed to help people who don’t know how to do anything in the kitchen just yet. It’ll get you up to speed.”

She presses the book into his hand.

“Thank you,” he says, feeling more relaxed. “This is very helpful.”

“No trouble, dear.”

“Master!” the Doctor calls from somewhere in the shop. “Come and look at the pretty pictures!”

The Master turns to peer down the aisle, but she’s not within his line of sight.

“Hold onto that one,” says the woman behind him, but when he turns back to ask her what she means, she’s gone. A sudden burst of sunlight outside warms the room, dust motes dancing in the beams.

The Master looks down at the book. There’s no pretentious apron-clad human; just a small cartoon of someone looking into their fridge, looking confused.

“Master!” calls the Doctor again.

“Coming!” he yells, and sets off to find her.

Despite having read the entire astronomy book in the shop, the Doctor insists on reading it again as soon as they’re home. She sits on the bed and stares at the pictures like if she concentrates hard enough, the stars might leap out of the page and surround her, and she’ll be home. The Master, meanwhile, tries out the first recipe in his book.

It is simple, to his extreme relief. Two slices of bread. Butter, warm enough to spread easily. For the filling he digs around in the fridge to find lettuce, cucumber, and tomatoes. He gathers from the book that the general idea is to slice the vegetables into thin enough pieces to fit neatly into the bread slices, to make a handheld, portable meal. Not a bad idea, as ideas go.

He takes out the chopping board and a sharp knife. He’s used enough daggers to feel comfortable with the weapon in his grip, but chopping food turns out to use different fine motor skills than stabbing does. He does his best, but the slices are all odd sizes, thick and thin, and some of them are wider at one end than the other.

He chops more and more slices. Eventually they conform to a better standard, until they become something the Master can be proud of. It makes something in his chest warm with satisfaction to see them laid out.

He sets out the pieces of bread and begins to layer vegetables on top of them. First goes the cucumber, and then the tomato, and then finally the lettuce. He has to sort of squish down the top piece of bread to get the sandwich to lie flat. Then he squints at his work. There’s still something needs doing. 

_ Got it.  _ The Master picks up a large knife with a flourish and carefully cuts the crusts of the bread off, then divides the sandwich into two neat triangles.

“That looks good,” says the Doctor.

The Master looks up to see her watching him, starry book abandoned to the side. There’s something in her expression which he can’t put his finger on. Her eyebrows are pulled slightly down, but not in the bad way. It makes her eyes look soft. Her mouth turns up slightly at the corners, but it’s such a tiny change that the Master can barely tell if he’s making it up. Her forehead, so often lined with stress when she’s talking to him, is smooth and relaxed.

If he didn’t know better, he’d say she looks fond.

“It’s for you,” the Master says without thinking.

And it is. It’s always for the Doctor. Getting the book, finding the recipe, chopping the vegetables - it was for her. Trying to cook vegetables. Buying the vegetables. Caring about the food pyramid. Caring about her.

It seems silly, that a sandwich would be the thing that tipped him over the edge. After all this time, the endless dance of back and forth and round again, those long sunny days at the academy when time seemed to stand still whenever Theta walked past, all the plots and plans and tricks to get her just to notice him, just to pay attention… After everything they’ve been through, it’s a silly little human thing with the crusts cut off that brings the knowledge home.

The Master is in love with the Doctor.

Everything that he’s been repressing up until this point hits. It’s the impending feeling that’s been hanging over him, and it’s crashed right into him, leaving him breathless. He gets the distinct sensation that his brain has cracked like an egg and is now draining out through his toes at an alarmingly fast rate.

He makes a tiny choking sound, and considering the rate at which his head is spinning, he thinks he’s doing quite well to keep it to that. But the Doctor pauses, her hand halfway across the counter to take the sandwich.

“What was that?” she asks.

_ I love you, _ he thinks, and thank everything that ever existed for the fact that humans don’t have psychic capabilities, because otherwise there is no way in hell the Doctor wouldn’t have heard him.

“I… I just. Um. Had a bit of… thing.”

The Doctor raises an eyebrow, but doesn’t respond otherwise. She takes the sandwich, sniffs it cautiously, shrugs, and bites into it. Her eyes close as she does. The Master wants to knock the sandwich out of her hands, pull her across the bench by her shirt, and snog her senseless.

A faint whine sounds, which the Master abruptly cuts off as soon as he realizes it’s coming from him.

“You sure you’re alright?” the Doctor asks through her mouthful.

“Peachy,” says the Master weakly.

“This is actually really good, by the way.” She swallows thickly and takes another bite before continuing talking. “I’m impressed.”

The Master would make a thousand million sandwiches for the Doctor if it means she’ll say that again.

“I’m impressed,” he echoes, tasting the words on his tongue. “Wait, I mean - no. Thanks. Is what I meant. I think.”

The Doctor uses her tongue to catch a stray crumb that caught on her lip. The Master wants so badly to be that crumb.

“Can you show me how to make it?” She picks up the knife, a gleam in her eye. “Do I get to stab things?”

The Master’s heart physically aches, crumpling beneath the weight of her. She’s ridiculous, and adorable, and so hot with that knife. And he loves her. Every time he thinks it he feels as if he’s been whacked over the head, leaving him dazed and stupid. His egg-brain, cracked and useless, could easily fry on the heat his cheeks are giving off.

He needs to get out of this situation before he does something he regrets. On one hand, leaving the Doctor’s presence seems like the worst idea he’s ever had, but then he thinks about what blurting out his feelings would feel like, and he demotes the former to second place. He needs to leave, and he needs to leave now.

“Hang on,” he says. “I think - last night - raw potato - not good. Bathroom. I’ll be back in… an hour. Two. Eat the sandwich without me, okay, bye?”

He can feel the Doctor’s stare on him as he bolts out of the house, but he can’t stop or he’ll say something he regrets and ruin everything. He shuts himself in the creepy toilet as quickly as humanly possible, sits down, puts his head in his hands, and lets out the quiet scream he thinks he might have been holding in since he saw Theta for the very first time.

This is going to change  _ everything. _

After five minutes, the raw panic subsides just a little, and the Master gets his head back enough to focus on what he needs to do right now. He can’t stay in here forever. He has to go back, and act normally, and somehow avoid suspicion. Because the Doctor can’t - she can’t - the very possibility of the Doctor finding out about his feelings is - it would create havoc, and not the fun kind. It would change the way she looks at him. It would change his world beyond the monumental shift it has already undertaken today, and he can’t have that.

So he has to hide it.

And that means he has to remember how to act normally. He has to rewind his mental state to what it was just an hour ago, back to their familiar relaxed approach to being bitter rivals. He can do that. He has to be able to. Once he goes back in, he’ll say something stupid, and the Doctor will say something stupid, and it’ll all be back to normal. Normal-ish.

Or maybe he’ll go in, and the Doctor will push him against a wall and look up at him with shining eyes and -

_ Stop it. _ Just thinking about it makes the panic threaten to come back. It’s like he’s lost all control of his brain, and it just keeps meandering off into thoughts about  _ hair _ and  _ lips _ and  _ coat _ and  _ Doctor.  _ It almost feels like lying to have all of this in his head while the Doctor remains unaware.

But he’s lied to the Doctor before. This will just be one more time. Perhaps he can treat it like an alias. It should be simple, because he’s playing himself, with one crucial difference: he’s not in love with the Doctor. But when he looks back on the last few weeks, the way he’s behaved around the Doctor… This has been coming for a while. He’s been obtuse about it, but his feelings haven’t actually changed today, he’s just finally realized what the feelings were.

So how does he play an alias who isn’t in love with the Doctor, when he’s been in love with her since forever?

What if he played an alias of himself who  _ was _ in love with the Doctor, but one who didn’t  _ know _ he was in love with the Doctor? He recoils from the thought initially, because it means having to consciously act out a blind and lovesick idiot, but the more he thinks about it, the more he thinks it might just be the only way to avoid detection. Playing blind and lovesick will be easy, because he’s  _ been _ blind and lovesick. And to the Doctor, it should appear consistent.

He leaves the toilet, leaning on the door to shut it. He closes his eyes and breathes the air in deep. He can do this. He just has to stay calm and consistent. 

Maybe it will help if he gives his alias a name. It was always his favourite part of coming up with a new plot. What would he call himself from two hours ago, the idiot who had no idea all the feelings he’d repressed for so long were about to attack with a vengeance?

_ Mr. Idiot, _ his brain suggests helpfully. No, that’s far too literal. Not that it had ever stopped him before, but… oh, but it’s going to stick, isn’t it?  _ Mr. Idiot. _ He can become Mr. Idiot, at least for the rest of the day. Mr. Idiot is peacefully oblivious to the world around him. The Master tries to channel that as best he can, letting carelessness seep into every joint of his body. 

He is one with Mr. Idiot. And Mr. Idiot must be good enough to fool the Doctor.

The Doctor is beginning to wonder what’s taking the Master so long. It’s true that some of their bathroom visits have needed to be… longer than usual, recently. Some vegetables are not meant to be eaten in large quantities - the Doctor will never touch a bean again if she can help it. 

She hopes the Master hasn’t fallen in the toilet.

In the meantime, she goes rummaging through the stack of videos they have in their to-watch pile.  _ Mean Girls _ looks too pink.  _ Shrek _ looks too green. But the next one she pulls out looks… interesting. The back of the cover tells her something about the future and the present, which means there’s time travel involved, which means they have to watch it.

She registers the door opening and closing behind her.

“Hi,” she says. “You want to watch something called  _ Terminator, _ right?”

“Um. Watch? With you?”

The Doctor frowns and turns around to study the Master. Can beans make a person act weird as well as have diarrhea?

“Yeah, of course.”

“Oh.” The Master doesn’t meet her eyes. His hands are doing something fidgety with his sleeves. “Wait. Did you say it’s called  _ Terminator?” _

“Yeah.”

He grins and finally looks at her properly. “Then I wanna watch it.”

“Finally.” She grins at him and slots the video into the player. “You’re going to like this. The back said that most of humanity has already died out when it starts. Come on.”

She throws herself onto the couch, sitting with her back against an armrest and her feet encroaching on the other half. The Master comes to stand next to the couch but doesn’t sit down, just looking at her.

“Are you gonna sit?” she asks after a pause.

The Master blinks. “Your feet are in the way.”

She snorts. “So?”

“So, there’s nowhere to sit.”

“Are you okay?” she asks.

Human men definitely don’t get periods, right? Because the Master is acting really strangely and she doesn’t know how to explain it other than weird human hormones. Usually he’d move her feet off. No, actually, usually he’d just sit on them until it was too uncomfortable and she had to pull them away, grumbling.

The Master makes a weird noise in the back of his throat and coughs quickly.

“I’m fine,” he says, an eyebrow twitching. “I’ll just sit on the floor.”

And he does. He sits on the floor. 

Maybe it’s ridiculous, but the Doctor feels a little hurt.

“Sit on the couch,” she whines, reaching out to tug at the shoulder of his coat. He stiffens. “I’ll move my feet, look.”

She pulls her feet in so that there’s half the couch left available.  _ More  _ than half the couch left available. It’s a very generous offering.

The Master pushes himself up and slides onto the couch. As soon as he’s settled, she untucks her legs and slides them into his lap. As short as this body might be, it needs to stretch out. The Master looks from her to her feet and back to her.

“You said you’d -”

“Yeah, yeah.” She waves a hand in his direction and shuffles down into a comfortable slouch. Before he can say anything, the picture on the TV changes from ads to a dark setting, a caption reading  _ Los Angeles, 2029 A.D. _

“Can you please move your -”

“Shh, it’s started.”

The Master doesn’t make any further protest, and for the next two hours, the Doctor lets the dark world of  _ Terminator _ wash over her. 

Sometime in between the opening and closing credits, the Master’s hands settle on her feet. It’s nice. It’s cosy. And even though she’s yelling at the TV about the laws of space-time, a spark of affection sits warm and quiet in her chest.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Art now exists for this chapter!!! Thank you so much to The Patrex for [this lovely piece](https://the-patrex.tumblr.com/post/619013484800294912/i-just-needed-to-draw-the-dangerously-cute), it makes me so happy 😭❤️


	10. Toss The Dice

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The Doctor is thousands of years old, and she has felt every single emotion there is to feel, and she has a healthy strategy in place to deal with this kind of thing.  
>  _Run away._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> CONTENT WARNING: ALCOHOL / HEAVY DRINKING
> 
> Thanks to staryeyedgazer for the beta!
> 
> UPDATE: The Patrex on tumblr posted some incredibly cute and soft art from last chapter!!! Please head to the notes there to find it, it's blessed ❤️

Something has definitely changed. The Doctor can’t put her finger on it, but she’s starting to feel a little like she’s walking on thin ice, like the next step she takes will end with her foot slipping through into glacial waters, and she’ll fall in over her head. It’s something to do with the way the Master is behaving. Rather, the way he’s not behaving.

Ever since they were kids, there’s been a tension, the push-pull of an argument between them, an evil plot she has to defeat, something solid for her to cling onto. But now he smiles at her. For the first time, he gets up earlier than her. He makes sandwiches for her to take to work. It feels like the ground between them has fallen away, the space shrunk, so she’s left scrambling, vulnerable, and far, far too close.

It’s scary. But she is thousands of years old, and she has felt every single emotion there is to feel, and she has a healthy strategy in place to deal with this kind of thing.

_ Run away. _

So she throws herself into her work, staying longer than she needs, offering to take extra shifts without prompting, and working on her vortex manipulator when there aren’t any extra shifts to take. She estimates it’s still only capable of a week or so travel at once; there’s just not a powerful enough energy source on 21st century earth that’s sufficiently compact to fit into the manipulator’s time bubble. She’s working on miniaturising batteries, in the vague hope that it could offer a solution, when Brian startles her.

“What is that thing?”

She jumps and drops it, trying to cover it with a nearby rag before he sees the mechanism.

“Oh - um - hi!” She turns around, leaning on her workbench, and gives him her best not-troublemaking smile.

“Hi,” says Brian, frowning. “Look, I’ve been meaning to talk to ya.”

The Doctor’s stomach drops. Talking is fine, but Brian’s tone suggests this talking is going to involve emotional confrontation, which is about third from the bottom of her list of  _ things to do before I die. _

“Oh, right. Look, I’ve just got to -”

“See, I’ve been thinking, you’re a real - you’re really - well.” Brian clears his throat. “You’ve really helped me out.”

The Doctor stops trying to think of reasons she could need to leave the conversation, and feels a lump form in her throat. No. No. This is exactly why she can’t ever do emotions.

“Oh,” she says.

“Yeah. Look, it’s just - you’re just - you’re pretty smart. Ya don’t wanna be working here forever. Have ya thought about, y’know, getting a qualification?”

She looks up at Brian. He has his hands in his pockets, and his eyes are trained on the bench behind her.

“A qualification?”

He meets her eyes then.

“Yeah. A degree, or apprenticeship, or… something.”

“Don’t those take… y’know… years?”

“It’d be worth it for someone like you,” he says gruffly. “Like I said. Ya don’t want to be working here forever.”

She’s struggling a little to process his suggestion. It’s a shape for her life she hasn’t followed since her time in the Academy. Planning for the future? Starting something that won’t pay off for  _ years? _ It’s impossible. Quite literally, she cannot fathom it.

“Huh,” is all she says. “I don’t… I don’t know.”

“Think about it,” Brian tells her, giving her an awkward nod before ambling away.

The Doctor turns back to her table, looking down at the makeshift vortex manipulator. The minute-hand underneath the watch screen trembles faintly when she taps it. She slips it into her pocket, the leather strap a warm and comforting weight in her hand. 

She has a feeling that she’s going to need to think about everything she’s feeling sooner rather than later, but tonight is not the night. Tonight, she thinks she’d rather forget. 

The Master, meanwhile, has surprised himself by managing to survive until the end of the week. It hasn’t been easy. Each small task has been survival: watching the film, taking a shower, sleeping next to the Doctor. Everything requires restraint, and thought, and care - and care he does. Too much. 

He makes the Doctor two whole sandwiches each morning, and then an extra one. Just in case she gets peckish. Her smile on her way out this morning was so blindingly bright that he couldn’t move for twenty minutes. And still, somehow, he survives.

But inevitably, by Sunday morning, his life is officially and quantifiably over.

It starts with a seemingly innocent question.

“Have you ever been drunk before?” the Doctor asks him on a Saturday evening. She worked late today, like she’s been doing for the last couple of weeks, and there are noticeable bags beneath her eyes.

“I’m literally an outlaw in most of the known universe.”

“Didn’t answer my -”

_ “Yes, _ I’ve been drunk before. We’ve been drunk  _ together, _ Doctor.” 

“Oh, right, yeah.” She sounds weirdly shifty. The Master remembers sneaking alcohol through the academy like he remembers the lines of the Doctor’s face, and he can’t believe she would forget it quite so quickly. What does she want?

“Why?” he asks.

“No reason.” She turns a page of the paper she’s reading, licking her thumb to get it to stick. The Master does his very best not to watch. He thinks he’s getting better at pretending not to notice her.

“There’s always a reason. Spit it out.”

The Doctor is sitting next to him on the couch, but not in the way you might expect. Her back is on the couch cushion, her head lolling off the end, and her legs are up over the couch back. The Master wouldn’t mind, except whenever she’s sitting like this, the temptation for her to shove her sock in his face is too much for her to resist.

Like now.

“Get off,” he mumbles beneath the layer of her woolly sock. “You stink.”

The Master cherishes any and all physical contact the Doctor initiates, but this is almost an exception.

“I know,” she says cheerfully. “Look, there’s an ad in the paper. Do you want to try it?”

“Try what?”

“Car-ah-oh-key.”

“Car-ah-oh-key?”

“Car-ah-oh-key.”

“What the hell is that?”

“I don’t know, but it’s on tonight in the pub three blocks down.” She flips her paper around to show him.

_ KARAOKE NIGHT, SATURDAYS. Half price shots for participants. _

“When was the last time we did shots together?” he asks, grinning. “Graduation?”

“That would be the last time you remember,” says the Doctor. “But there was actually this one time in my fifth body - you know, the pretty one?”

The Master really wishes he could pretend not to know which body she meant.

“Um. There was?” The Master racks his brains. He’s getting nothing. “Are you sure?”

“Oh, yeah. You got so hammered you passed out. Must’ve had the mother of all hangovers.”

“What happened?”

“Oh, nothing much. We left you in your TARDIS. I couldn’t stop Adric from drawing a moustache on you, though.”

The Master has a vague flashback of a terrible headache and screaming at his foggy reflection in the mirror.

“Maybe shots aren’t such a good idea,” he frowns.

“Well, I think they’re a brilliant idea. Come on, let’s go! To car-ah-oh-key!”

The Doctor does a backwards roll off the couch and lands with a thump on her bottom. The Master begins to laugh at her, but then she’s pulling him up and out the door, and they’re on their way.

The first thing the Master learns about karaoke is that it is popular. The bar is crowded, so much so that the general hum of the audience almost entirely obscures the music, as loud as it is. The Doctor has a firm grip on his arm, though, and he should pretend to be annoyed, but mostly he’s grateful that he won’t lose her in the crowd.

“What can I get you?” the bartender asks. He’s so tall he has to bend down to see them beneath the racks of glasses above the bar, dreadlocks swinging down below his shoulders.

“Thirteen shots,” says the Doctor confidently.

The bartender whistles. “Just for the two of you?”

“Yup. Just to get started.”

The bartender looks from the Doctor to the Master and back to the Doctor. The Master notices there are a few small, colourful threads winding their way through his hair.

“Your money,” the bartender shrugs. “Vodka alright?”

“Um, yes, I know what vodka is. Vodka is alright.” 

The Doctor pays with cash, and the bartender slides them over a tray of shot glasses full to the brim with clear liquid. The Master glances up to see the Doctor watching him, her teeth bared in a grin.

“Race you,” she says, and grabs the nearest glass.

“If you really think you can keep up,” the Master retorts, grabbing a glass and downing it. The alcohol burns pleasantly on its way down, but he barely has time to register the sensation before he’s taken the next glass in hand.

And another.

And another.

By the fifth shot, his body feels a little bit like it’s on fire, and his throat is raw with the feeling. He slams the glass down on the bar, and glances over at the Doctor. She seems to be having the same realization that he is, holding her hand up in front of her face. It’s shaking. 

But then she sees him watching, and her face hardens, and she downs another shot.

Well, if she’s not going to play fair, then neither is he. 

Two shots later, he’s already beginning to regret his decision. There’s only one left, then, and they both grab it at the same time, his hand closing around hers on the glass.

“Give it -”

“I got there first -”

“But I -”

“Get  _ off -  _ aha!” The Master’s hand is shaken off by the Doctor’s, and she throws back the thirteenth and final shot.

“I would have won,” he says, and clutches at his stomach, which is twisting into all sorts of shapes he’s fairly sure it shouldn’t be. “If you hadn’t… ugh.”

The Doctor blinks at him. She’s gone all fuzzy and bright. Like a little glow worm.

“I am  _ not _ a g-g-... a g-glow worm.”

The Master laughs. The Doctor not being able to talk properly is very funny.

“I think…” he begins. “I think…”

“Talk. F-f-faster.”

“I  _ think…”  _ he starts again, holding up a finger. “... that humans… are…  _ lightweights.” _

The Doctor snorts, and pokes his cheek.

“You’re p-probably right.”

Lights and colours swirl around them, but the Doctor’s face stays steady in the centre of the Master’s vision. Time stretches. Through the fog of his brain, the Master realizes he’s staring.

“ALRIGHT, CAN I HAVE EVERYONE’S - OH - sorry. Can I have everyone’s attention, please?”

The Master drags his gaze away from the Doctor and peers at the back of the bar, where there is a small stage, and someone speaking far too loudly into the microphone. The noise around them lulls slightly, and then picks back up.

“Right. Well. If you want to sing, there’s a sheet at the bar where you can sign up, so just write down your name and your song and - oh - yes - alright -”

A group of fluorescent youths has jumped onto the stage, and they’re hustling off the announcer, who goes without much of a fuss. The Master still doesn’t understand what karaoke actually  _ is,  _ so he watches with interest as the most fluorescent of the lot takes the microphone.

“Do you th-think she’s giving a ssssss… a ssssss…”

“Speech?” the Master finishes the Doctor’s sentence. She glares at him. “No. I think it’s… a song.”

Sure enough, music starts to wash through the bar, so loud that the Master can only just hear himself think. And the fluorescent youths start to sing. Quite badly.

The Master looks at the Doctor, and the Doctor looks at the Master. Despite being drunk off their faces, despite all the history that pushes them apart, despite not having the ability to make mental contact, they both know exactly what the other is thinking.

_ We could do better. _

That’s how they end up on stage, extremely drunk and faced with the lyrics of a random song the Doctor insisted she’d heard on the radio at some point. She grins across at him from her microphone. His slow, sleepy brain throws up the suggestion of an image of her in her long black coat and bowtie, as if that could possibly improve the situation.

The song starts with a steady drumbeat. The Master thinks it would make a good marching tune for his cyber-armies. If he still had them. If he still wanted to have them. Lyrics present themselves on the screen in front of them.

_ Imagine me and you, I do _

_ I think about you day and night, it's only right _

Even in a human body, there is a musicality inherent to Gallifreyans, so singing along with the tune isn’t actually the hard part. The hard part is not staring at the Doctor.

_ To think about the girl you love and hold her tight _

The Master gives up, and stares at the Doctor, gripping his microphone stand so hard he can hear it creak above the music.

_ So happy together _

The Doctor looks over at him and gives him a thumbs-up with a side of dopey smiles. The Master somehow manages to stumble, despite standing in one place.

_ If I should call you up, invest a dime _

_ And you say you belong to me and ease my mind _

Is it just him, or is the Doctor staring back at him?

_ Imagine how the world could be, so very fine _

She’s definitely staring.

_ So happy together _

The Doctor takes her mic out of the stand with a flourish and struts over to him, holding out a hand. He wants to say something like,  _ that’s my move, _ but the lights are hot on his face and this feels like everything he’s ever wanted so he’s not going to ruin it. He takes her hand and lets himself be pulled into centre stage, so that they’re face to face as they sing the next verse.

_ Me and you and you and me _

The Doctor points to herself and at him during the words, and he mirrors her.

_ No matter how they toss the dice, it had to be _

She’s really hamming it up now, play-acting like he hasn’t seen her do for centuries. It reminds him of a certain electric guitar, a certain pair of sunglasses… 

_ The only one for me is you, and you for me _

If she wants to play, he’ll play. He gives her as much as she gives him, exaggerating his expressions as he sings. It’s not nearly as difficult as it ought to be to adopt an adoring, lovestruck face.

_ So happy together _

The Doctor pulls him in closer, and someone in the crowd gives a  _ woop _ of appreciation, but he hardly hears it, because the Doctor’s smile is deafening. Intoxicating.

_ I can't see me lovin' nobody but you _

_ For all my life _

The Master can feel the Doctor’s warm breath as she sings, which makes it very hard for him to maintain his act of an act. Faux-lovestruck gives way to real lovestruck, and he just has to hope like hell that the Doctor doesn’t notice.

_ When you're with me, baby the skies'll be blue _

_ For all my life _

As the song fades out, the Master lowers his mic to his side. He beams across at the Doctor, who stumbles over seemingly nothing and grins back at him. They get a smattering of applause before they’re shunted off stage by a throng of people wearing all black and some of the most impressive eyeliner the Master has ever seen. 

The Doctor takes his hand instead of his arm to pull him through the crowd this time. And the Master thinks he might be the happiest he’s ever been.

They leave after listening to a few more songs, which are, in the Master’s opinion, far inferior to their own rendition. Besides, the Doctor has reached the floppy, exuberant stage of drunkenness, which risks causing harm to the general public.

“Taxi!” she yells, flinging herself towards the road. “TAXI!”

“Doctor!” the Master cries, and drags her back before she dives into traffic. “Are you sure you can’t walk home? It’s not far.”

She makes a disgusted sound. “But it’s so  _ faaaar. _ I don’t want to walk. And you might  _ trip.” _

Not a moment later, she trips over nothing, and the Master catches her before she ploughs headfirst onto the pavement. He’s still more than a little dizzy himself, though, so they both sway for a second while they catch their balance.

“Taxi?” the Doctor asks hopefully.

“Taxi,” the Master sighs.

Bed. They’re in bed. And they’re still fully dressed.

“Shoes,” the Doctor mutters, her head lolling on the pillow. “I need… shoes.”

“You need to take them  _ off,” _ the Master mumbles. “Use… use your feet.”

“I don’t  _ want _ to.”

“Fine. See if I care.”

The Doctor squints at him. “You do care.”

The Master blows a raspberry.

“You  _ do,” _ she insists.

“Okay. Okay. But if I care… so do you.”

“That’s  _ disgusting. _ I don’t care… never care.” She rolls onto her side, and he copies her. He forgot to turn off the bathroom light, and a sliver of it stripes over the Doctor’s face. 

“You do.” He reaches out a hand to poke her cheek, but it loses momentum, and ends up settled on her neck. 

“... I do.” She reaches out as well, and then her hand is on his cheek.

“Wha…”

“Your face is always so… Even when it changes… Even when you steal it… You…” She trails off as her fingertips find their way over the contours of his face, tracing his cheekbones, tapping gently on his nose, thumbing over his lips.

“I…?”

“You.”

She’s closer now. Her thumb is still on his lips. He can smell the alcohol on her breath. The drowsiness of the alcohol is suddenly spiked with anxiety, his heartbeat thundering in his ears. Her face is too close to focus on.

“Can I…?” she asks, and even though she’s whispering, he can feel the ghosting breeze of her words on his mouth.

Slowly, slowly, his brain processes the words, and the intent. Time slows down to an aching pace, so that forming the word  _ yes _ and waiting for an action in response would be torturous. 

Instead, he kisses the Doctor.

She tastes like vodka, starlight, and desperation. Time is still slow at the start, but when the Doctor starts to kiss him back properly, it kickstarts again with gusto. Before the Master can form any sort of thought beyond  _ holy shit holy shit holy shit,  _ the Doctor has shifted to kiss an unsteady line down his neck, and time notches up again. He doesn’t know what to do with his hands. What are hands even for? What is their function, their purpose, their place in the universe? These hands, he cannot move them, his hands are -

“Stop thinking so loud,” the Doctor mutters, and resumes the neck kissing. He lets out a whimper that does nothing for his self-esteem. 

Then the Doctor’s hands are tugging at the top of his shirt, and at last, at last his hands can help with something. He starts to unbutton, his heart beating faster, his head still caught in a daze of drunken want, but he hasn’t reached the fourth button when something soft falls against his stomach. He looks down to see the Doctor, her face squashed against his shirtfront, eyes closed.

She’s asleep.

The Master’s hands freeze where they are, and even as he feels his face fall, a bubble of laughter makes its way up. He giggles, and the movement jostles the Doctor, who snuffles in her sleep. He lets his head fall back against the pillow. He’ll move in a second. He’ll take off the Doctor’s shoes, and he’ll move her onto her side of the bed, and he’ll… he’ll… 

Light. Too much light. The Doctor tries half-opening an eye, but it’s too much, and she groans. Ugh. Wet mouth. Crusty mouth? Oh. She’s drooled in her sleep. That’s… pleasant. She’s asleep on something a little scratchy. 

She forces her eyes open, squinting as the light burns against the back of her brain, and looks down at - the Master? Oh God, did she fall asleep on him again?

Wait.

Slowly, with the oncoming knowledge of doom, she looks up his shirt, at the buttons that are undone. He did that. She remembers watching. She remembers trying to help - she remembers -

“Oh,  _ fuck.” _

She springs up from the bed, jostling the Master a little, and freezes when he mumbles something in his sleep, but he shows no other signs of waking. What is she going to  _ do? _ He will, inevitably, wake up. 

And he’s going to remember, and he’s going to know that she remembers, and either they’ll have to agree to lie or he won’t  _ want _ to lie and something terrible will happen, she’ll find out he  _ cares _ and he’ll want to stay and she’ll have to get a qualification for years and years and there’ll be no escape from a life so totally planned out and she’ll never be able to run away, never find her TARDIS, never be able to be alone, never be able to be independent and alone and safe and secure.

The Doctor’s breathing is coming fast. Her fingertips are tingling oddly. The whole world feels wrong and bad, and she can’t understand how the sun can keep shining through the windowpane like the sky isn’t going to come crashing down on her.

She has to escape. She has to leave. She needs to be able to run. Alone and free and running. That’s what she needs to be. Because she cannot stand to be what she is right now - scared, and vulnerable, and in the same room as someone she cares too much about. 

She has a strategy, after all.

With a numbed hand, she pulls the vortex manipulator out of her pocket. Fumbles with the coordinates. And activates it.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> FINALLY I got to write this chapter. It feels like literal years ago that I planned out this fic, thought of the karaoke scene, and chose the title. Of course, that was pre-March, so it was literally years ago. I hope it was worth the wait for y’all too 💖 and [here’s the song!](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QhMzZ_KCp_E)  
> Also. Look. The Doctor and the Master are total idiots, and they don’t know how to human, so I really hope you haven’t been taking their advice on anything. Particularly with the stuff in this chapter, though, do NOT do what they do, please know your limits, drink responsibly, and drink with people who will take care of you if anything goes wrong.  
> One last thing. Some huge stuff is happening right now. Stay safe out there, but stay angry, and don’t let them grind you down. Kia kaha 💖 black lives matter.


	11. The Master and his Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Week

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _I am so much more than you,_ the Doctor had said, and hadn’t she just hit the nail right on its bloody head.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you all for waiting a little while for the update, this chapter was a hard one to get right, and I’ve just finished exams. Thank you again to staryeyedgazer for the beta! Hope you enjoy! 💖

Koschei is so very cold. It seeps into his bones, permeates his soul, icy ropes that tether his heart in a chill web. He tries desperately to keep his head above water, but he’s shivering violently, and the ocean is rolling with waves. He coughs and splutters as one sends saltwater right up his nose.

He looks around frantically for land, or something to cling to, but for as far as he can see, there’s nothing. Just more ocean.

“Koschei!” someone yells. 

_ Theta. _

“Theta!” he screams back, fighting the water with renewed vigour. “Theta, where are you?”

The swells around him are over a metre tall, though, and he has to squint through the sea spray, so he only has a thin line of clear vision. He can’t see anyone. Did he imagine her?

“Theta!” he yells again, his voice hoarse with the effort. “Theta!”

Somewhere far away, a seagull cries out, but Theta’s voice doesn’t speak again. Koschei’s movements flag as he loses hope. 

“Theta,” he says weakly.

A wave cuffs him sharply over the head, and then he’s under, sinking endlessly down into dark oblivion.

Koschei gasps and sits bolt upright, panting for breath. The sheets are twisted around his chest, making it more difficult than usual, and he claws them off, sweat soaking through the front of his shirt.

“Theta,” he gasps, lurching to the side and reaching for her. His hands scrabble against empty sheets. “Thete?”

No one replies. It’s too quiet, quiet enough for his heartbeat to ring in his ears. As his vision clears, he calms a little, seeing familiar surroundings. He’s well and truly tangled with the bedding, and he has to spend a good minute wrestling to get free of it. 

“Doctor?” he calls tentatively, pushing himself up from the bed and peering into the bathroom. It’s empty.

He goes to the curtains and draws them back, then winces and gasps as the light hits his eyes. The Master becomes aware of a distant drumming in the back of his head, but it’s nothing like the insanity that followed him most of his life. It’s the dull pounding of a hangover. He ignores the sinking feeling in his stomach. She has to be here somewhere - or else she’ll just have gone to the shops, and she’ll be back by afternoon. It’s going to be fine.

A hangover?

Oh, right.  _ We were drunk. _

_ We were drunk, and then we came home, and… and…  _

His brain sputters to life solely in order to throw the memory of the Doctor’s lips against his at him. There’s not a good word for the sensation, and if there was, he wouldn’t want to use it for fear of sullying the memory somehow. He touches a finger to his lips lightly, preserving the memory as best he can amidst the lieu of unpleasant sensations currently bombarding him.

And then suddenly the Doctor’s inexplicable absence becomes a lot more explicable. 

_ Well, shit. _

The Master’s immediate response is to try not to let it hurt too much. It doesn’t yet, but it will, so it’s best to get a head start on repressing his feelings now.

She’ll come back sometime, anyway, and they’ll either pretend like nothing happened, or… they’ll pretend like nothing happened. Good. So that’s that, then. So all he has to do is wait. For however long it takes.

After a few moments of waiting, however, it becomes clear that the repression of feelings didn’t happen soon enough, because he’s starting to feel the effects. The panic, for one. It starts in his fingertips, a numbing trembling that accelerates and spreads much faster than he would like. Then there’s the doubt, an empty black hole in the centre of his stomach leaving him cold and empty and questioning everything he knows. 

Will she really come back? There’s a very real possibility that this is too much for her. The Doctor has always loved to run, and as such, running away from things is her default for unknown situations. The Master does wish she wouldn’t run away from him quite so much, though.

He flops on top of the unmade bed, facedown, arms spread-eagled, and groans into his pillow. There’s nothing to do but let it hurt, and wait for the Doctor to return. 

So wait he does.

By the end of the day, he’s accomplished nothing, and there’s still no sign of the Doctor. It seems that hangovers and heartache don’t mix, because he feels worse while he’s trying to sleep than he felt after four weeks of eating cereal and supermarket chicken. 

By the end of the next day, he’s regressed to eating cereal straight from the box. It doesn’t make him feel better.

Brian calls on Tuesday morning. The Doctor hasn’t been going to work, wherever she is, and that makes the Master feel worse. Brian says something about a ‘domestic’ that the Master doesn’t understand. He hangs up before Brian can make it through the second syllable of  _ goodbye _ and watches  _ Star Trek  _ with unseeing eyes until early the next morning. 

He wakes up with a headache. He’s not sure when the last time he drank water was. He drinks from the tap for twenty minutes, and immediately needs to pee. Life is generally bad.

Wednesday, Thursday, Friday and Saturday blend into one homogenous day. He wakes up late, doesn't feel like leaving the house, leaves the house later, finally gets to Mary-Anne’s lab much later, and works through the night on the one thing that offers any form of distraction. He adds some new and unplanned features to his med scanner, taking inspiration from his old TCE. A simple DNA shifter isn’t hard, and should theoretically work to erase any dangerous mutations humanity carries. Theoretically. It’s not quite ready for testing.

On Sunday, though, he wakes up late, stares at the ceiling, and feels his last reserve of willpower drain away. He decides that he’s not going to get out of bed until the Doctor returns. That is, he’s never going to get out of bed. So he lies there, with nothing to distract him from his thoughts, and unsurprisingly, his mind begins to race. 

And spirals, and spirals, and spirals.

And then he starts crying.

The familiar spark and squeeze of the raw time vortex surrounds the Doctor, and she screws up her face until it’s over. Her time skipper, while rudimentary, offers just enough protection that she thinks she won’t throw up. Probably. She rips back into the plane of existence and falls to her knees, panting, relief washing over her. 

She doesn’t feel good about running away, but it does make her feel better.

Then someone says, “Doctor?” and she looks up into the trembling, darkened face of the Master.

“Shit,” she breathes.

And then —

“I am going to  _ KILL YOU _ ,” the Master screams, and lunges for her.

Most animals, both on Earth and other planets, fight with their claws sheathed. The Doctor and the Master usually - not always, but usually - abide by a similar rule. They don’t try to kill each other. Not really. It’s a show of force, or a show of anger, a show of something to establish dominance.

It’s the distance between them, the push-pull of old tensions and the battles of centuries ago. And it’s so much more natural to fight him, isn’t it? So much easier.

That’s what she tells herself, when he wrestles her to the ground. She flips him, though, and has the upper hand for a moment, until he yanks her hair and she flinches. Then she gets him with an elbow in the side, and her other arm spans across his chest, aiming to hold him down until she can get a proper advantage.

But there’s something wrong. When she pins him, she meets no resistance. He’s stopped fighting. His chest is moving, though, in uncertain, shaking movements. At first she thinks,  _ he’s coughing, _ but there’s not enough sound. Then she thinks,  _ he’s laughing, _ but a look at his face is enough to dispel that claim. His cheeks are wet, his eyes shining, and his lips are pressed tightly shut in what appears to be an effort to remain silent. Until —

“You left me,” he whispers, tears streaming.

The Doctor removes her arm restraining him in place, and pushes herself up, kneeling at his side. All of the panic from a few moments ago returns in a flood, the need for flight overwhelming, all of her screaming to  _ get away, don’t look, don’t see. _ But, despite her inner monologue on animals, the Doctor is a person, and can make conscious choice above her instincts. The Master is hurting, and to run away from that would be to betray him more thoroughly than she already has.

“I’m sorry,” she says instead.

“You  _ left _ me,” he repeats, as if speaking it out loud could make her feel any more guilty than she already does. Her stomach feels sick with it, like it could revolt at any point, hot acid making its way up her throat —

Hang on, that’s actually—

The Doctor claps a hand over her mouth and leaps up, sprinting to the bathroom. She throws up, and it’s the grossest thing she’s ever done, and she can’t believe humans haven’t invented a more pleasant way of settling a stomach upset, because this seems like the sort of thing anyone should want to avoid at any cost. She thinks she might have chunks of it in her nose. Her  _ nose. _ Bodies are so stupid _. _

She washes the sink down, grimacing at the mess, before she becomes aware of the Master’s presence in the doorway.

“You’re sick,” he says, and she doesn’t look at him. He’ll figure it out soon enough.

“I’m - I - ugh,” she groans, her stomach gurgling again. She bends over the sink, breathing hard.

He’s at her side instantly, and when she heaves again, warm, gentle hands hold her hair back. Her stomach settles after that, and after a few minutes of standing at the sink, she looks across at the Master.

He’s figured it out.

“You’ve got a hangover,” he says, his eyebrows furrowing. “The same hangover from a week ago.”

She grimaces, and it’s not an explicit confirmation, but it may as well be.

“You left me,” he says for the third time, “And you  _ time-skipped.” _

“I can — ”

“Explain, then. Go on.” He crosses his arms, and though his tone is calm, she can sense the storm building again behind it. 

She bites her lip, and takes a deep breath.

“I made a vortex manipulator,” she says. “I didn’t mean to use it, I just  — I panicked.”

“You panicked,” the Master repeats. “And you used the vortex manipulator that you just happened to have built earlier and tucked in your pocket.”

“It was just for emergencies!” It’s the wrong thing to say. She can see it in the clench of his jaw.

“So why didn’t you tell me about it?” He’s enunciating his words very clearly, as if she’s stupid. She knows it’s supposed to piss her off. It works.

“I’m not an idiot,” she snaps. “I know you’d have escaped ages ago if you’d had the means.”

The Master’s brow knits together. “Is that what you think?”

“What, like it’s not true?”

“You know, you’re not  — you’re not  _ holding _ me here. I’m not your little prisoner. I’m not  _ contained.” _

“So why didn’t you leave, then? You’ve had a week. Why not just piss off?”

“Do you have any idea how  _ worried  _ I’ve been? No note, no explanation, just an empty bed and a million questions — ”

“I don’t have to tell anyone what I’m doing, or where I’m going. I left that all behind on Gallifrey. I chose freedom. If you’re going to try and dictate my life, then — ”

“I’m not  _ asking _ to dictate your life, I’m asking for you to trust me!”

“How am I supposed to do that?”

“Wha - I have been nothing but exemplary, for  _ weeks. _ Do you know I have my TCE? In a drawer by my bed? And I haven’t used it on a single person.”

“Oh, congratulations, you haven’t murdered anyone. Am I supposed to applaud?”

“No, you’re supposed to act like a decent person. If I have to, so do you. That means  _ telling me things.” _

“I’d rather leave,” says the Doctor, and for a moment it’s horribly, terribly genuine. It’s a trigger that kickstarts her brain into a slightly higher awareness of the situation, which floods her with a wave of regret. They’re edging into territory that can do real damage.

The Master’s face twists, and he’s trembling again, despite so obviously trying to hide it.

“Then leave,” he hisses. “Take your vortex manipulator and go.”

“Master,” she says helplessly.

“What? Don’t you want to get back to your timestream?”

“I — ”

“Don’t you?”

“Don’t  _ you?”  _ she fires back.

He pauses, looking thrown off. “What?”

“What about your timestream? Don’t you want to get back to it? Aren’t you bored of me yet?”

He blinks at her.

“Are you bored of me?” he asks, and it’s vulnerable. Open. She can’t bring herself to lie.

“No,” she says. “I never could be.”

They stare at each other. The Master’s the first to break eye contact, turning away and pacing to the other side of the bedroom. The Doctor follows him slowly, unsure of where this can go next. Her head is throbbing, and more than anything she wants to lie down and not argue anymore.

“I’m going out,” says the Master. “I’ll be back soon. Please don’t leave again.”

It feels a little bit like being abandoned, seeing him walk out the door, but she supposes that was part of his intention, and quite honestly? She deserves it. 

She flops on the bed, intending to straighten out her thoughts, but as soon as her body sinks into the soft mattress she’s out like a light. 

The Master walks and walks and walks. His brain feels numb and soggy, like an overdunked gingernut. He’d had the entire week of planning out exactly what he was going to yell at the Doctor when she resurfaced, and as soon as she’d appeared, it had all gone out the window. She’s like that, though. A storm that leaves chaos in its wake. He can be like that, too.

His brain keeps focussing on the last thing she said. About how she could never be bored of him. It’s not anything close to the love that overwhelms him every second of every day, but it’s something. If she can never be bored of him, does that mean she could be persuaded to stay with him? 

It’s a bit pathetic, though. Tagging along with the Doctor, helplessly in love, with no hope of anything in return, forever? He thinks he would last longer than the human companions do, but not forever. Still. It doesn’t mean he wants to leave the Doctor’s company anytime soon.

The Master finds himself in a park, and hoists himself up onto a wide concrete wall to sit while he contemplates. He wonders if the Doctor really does want to go back to her timestream. He wonders if he should go back to his. Cybermasters, universal domination, etcetera. He’ll disappoint the Doctor again, and again, and she’ll stop him, because she’s brilliant, and she won’t show mercy, because he’s beyond saving.

Would she kill him in a human body? Knowing that there was no chance he’d get out of it?

He buries his face in his hands, and tries to think about something else. His brain has the Doctor’s face on repeat, though, playing the mixture of disgust, disdain, and disappointment she saves especially for him. Whatever returning to his timestream would mean, it might offer a reprieve from this  — a reprieve from the constant reminders of her.

_ I am so much more than you, _ she’d said, and hadn’t she just hit the nail right on its bloody head.

He can’t stay. He needs space and time to breathe in. Something that’s not filled with the Doctor. And he’s sure the Doctor wants to leave, because she is more than him. She’s better. She should go and be better without him.

He kicks his legs against the wall, and adopts a less introspective, more general brooding position for the next half-hour. With his decision made, his mind slowly starts to work properly again, able to avoid the downwards negative spirals that panic so often induces. He watches some children feed the birds that float in the water, and wonders if the birds also need to eat a full food pyramid, or if the white chunks of bread are enough for them to stay healthy. Lucky bastards.

When he gets back home, the Doctor is fast asleep, sprawled out over the bed, snoring lightly with her face mashed up against the covers. The Master lets himself smile at the picture she makes, and sits down on the bed next to her.

She’s not quite as fast asleep as he thought, though, because she stirs at the disturbance of the mattress.

“Mmmngh,” she groans, and cracks open an eye. “Hi. Wait. Hi. Are you still mad at me?”

It’s unfair that the Doctor has a natural advantage over him, that the sight of her hair mussed and sleep-red eyes makes it a little bit hard for him to breathe. He shrugs in response.

“I think maybe I should be,” he says. “You?”

She rubs her eyes and sits up. “No. Fuck. I said some stupid stuff, didn’t I?”

The Master knows she probably means all her nonsense about personal freedoms, but all he can think of is her telling him she could never be bored of him. Did she not mean it? He can’t ask. It would be too obvious.

“Something like that.”

“I’m sorry,” she says. She leans across the bed to take his hands in hers. He tries not to stare at them, the contrast of her skin against his. “I time skipped because I was scared, and I didn’t really… you know… think.” 

“You rarely do,” the Master mutters, and she huffs.

“I do sometimes! Sometimes, on a Friday night, I sit down and I decide to have a good think. Keeps me going for the rest of the month.”

The Master lets one corner of his mouth tug up, and waits for her to continue.

“Right. Apologising. Yes. Um. That thing you said, about how I should tell you things.” She fidgets with the sleeve of her coat and avoids his gaze. “You’re right.”

The Master smiles properly then, and squeezes her hands so she’ll look at him.

“I need that on record. Say it again?”

“Never,” she declares, lifting her chin in defiance.

“Please?” He widens his eyes, fluttering his eyelashes in the way this body is so naturally inclined to.

“Ugh. You’re right, okay? Completely, absolutely right. I feel unclean just saying that.”

“Good.” He squeezes her hands again, and this time, she squeezes back.

“We can’t go back to our timestreams just yet, though,” she says, scrunching up her nose. “I can’t figure out the miniaturised power supply.”

Oh. He’d expected more of a conversation about this.

“So you want to go back to your timestream?” He tries to ask casually, but he suspects it fails miserably.

She frowns. “Don’t you want to go back to yours?”

He has less than half a second to decide how he’ll react. To lie or not to lie. It’s not a question.

“Well, yeah,” he says.

“That’s settled, then.”

It shouldn’t hurt, because he knows that’s what’s best for the both of them. But it does. 

“We’ll go as soon as we can figure out the power supply,” he says. “Did you say it needs to be miniaturised?”

She nods, and then her eyes light up just as the Master has the same idea.

“Does your TCE work on batteries?”

“Let’s find out.”


	12. Ease My Mind

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “So we can’t travel in space?”  
> “We could!” the Doctor insists defensively. “It just… would be extremely dangerous and probably end up with us floating in endless freezing unbreathable vacuum.”  
> “So we can’t travel in space?”  
> “... No.”

It turns out that the TCE does work on batteries, as well as a number of other things. Fruit, for example.

“Oh my god,” the Doctor wheezes, dropping to her knees and scrabbling on the carpet to find the tiny orange speck. “It’s  _ miniscule.” _

The Master kneels next to her, squinting at the miniaturised tangerine. It’s adorable, honestly, and should be used as a prop in a doll’s house.

“What should I do next?” he asks, standing up and aiming his TCE at the fruit bowl.

“Ooh, try a banana!”

He obliges, and hands the Doctor the tiny yellow fruit. 

“It’s so cute,” she says, holding her hand up to eye level. “You know, you could make a whole miniature museum using that thing. Instead of murdering people.”

“I guess,” says the Master, doing his best to sound hesitant. The last thing he needs is for the Doctor to realise how soft he’s getting under her influence.

“Do an apple next,” she commands, and he obeys without thinking, zapping the shiny green apple into a tiny green apple. He flicks it towards the Doctor with his finger, and she launches herself out of the way, sprawling on the floor.

“What was that for?” the Master asks, confused.

“There’s a human expression,” she gasps. “An apple a day keeps the… oh, never mind.”

The Master doesn’t get it, but he lets it go, instead inspecting the TCE. It’s warm against his palm, and if he tries hard enough to imagine it, it almost feels like it’s burning his skin.

“We should put the batteries in the vortex manipulator,” he hears himself say. “Test it out over short range.”

He looks up to see the Doctor watching him with an inscrutable expression.

“Yeah,” she says, standing up and dusting her coat off. “Sure.”

She pulls the vortex manipulator out of her pocket and pries the back off with her fingernails, setting it on the table.

“You didn’t fasten this very well,” the Master comments mildly. “No screws? Not even a paperclip?”

“Like I said, I wasn’t actually planning on using it. It was in the first-fourth phase of prototyping. You know, the wibbly one.”

“Still. Whatever would Borusa say?”

They’ve lost more common ground than they’ve gained since the academy, but shit-talking Borusa has always, and will always be something they can excel in together. The Doctor grins.

“Probably something like,” she puts on a deeper, hollow, haughty voice,  _ “Theta Sigma, this is entirely unacceptable. I hope that you would think twice, and indeed thrice, before ever using something of this calibre. Also, detention for Koschei.” _

“Pompous bastard,” the Master says fondly. 

He takes the miniaturised batteries and fixes them in place, twisting the induction wires and looping them around the tiny power sources. Then he notices something.

“You haven’t got a spatial delimiter on this.”

“Nah,” says the Doctor, waving a hand. “It’s impossible to tune the wibblers, humans haven’t developed the tech for absolute zero temperatures yet.”

“So we can’t travel in space?”

“We could!” the Doctor insists defensively. “It just… would be extremely dangerous and probably end up with us floating in endless freezing unbreathable vacuum.”

“So we can’t travel in space?”

“... No.”

“Right. That TARDIS we need is going to end up on the other side of the planet, isn’t it?”

“Yeah. We can travel manually, though.”

“Time skip then travel?”

“Uh,” says the Doctor, screwing up her face, “Travel then time skip might be better.”

“Why?”

“Well, I’m not sure which part of 2020 we’ll end up in. Actually, that’s something to think about. We should really, really aim for the first couple of months, or else it’s all going to get very complicated and difficult.”

“Oh?”

“I’ll explain later. Ooh, we’ll have to take a plane!” The Doctor’s eyes sparkle excitedly.

The Master tries not to think about the last time they were on a plane together, and fails. She’d been so horrified to realize it was him, and yes, that had sort of been the intended effect, but that didn’t mean it didn’t hurt. Then something else occurs to him.

“Don’t humans require some kind of travel pass?” He remembers, very vaguely, being annoyed about it when he was prime minister.

“Oh, yeah.” The Doctor rummages in her pockets and produces her psychic paper. “This should do it.”

“Right. So when do we…?”

They look at each other. The Master is frantically trying to think of reasons to delay the travel. What if tonight is the last night he gets to sleep next to the Doctor? What if he doesn’t see her again for centuries?

“I, uh… There’s no reason to stay longer, is there?”

The Master is forced to shake his head and say, “Not really.”  _ Apart from that I’m in love with you, and I cherish each and every second, and I want this to last forever. _

“Good. Right. Well. I owe Brian an apology, and a goodbye, but I’ll do that tomorrow. And then we can leave?”

“Yeah,” the Master hears himself say, as if from very far away. “Tomorrow works.”

The next day, the Doctor takes her usual bus to work, and tries to ignore the pit of guilt sitting hard and heavy in her stomach. Quite apart from betraying the Master, she and Brian had had an agreement, a bond of trust, which she’d broken with no warning. Even now she’s only going back to make her leaving official. And then it will all be over.

Maybe she’ll take Brian for a quick trip in the TARDIS once they get to 2020. The thought makes her smile. He’d be one of those companions who never wants to leave the blue box, simply because being in it is so exciting for them. He’d probably spend the rest of his life tinkering away with the warp drive if he could.

“Oh,” says Brian when she arrives. “You’re back.”

“Yeah.” She looks down at her feet. “Sorry, I was just… Me and the Master had a…”

“I get it. Don’t leave that poor guy alone again, though.” Brian wipes his greasy hands on a rag. “He didn’t sound so good on the phone.”

The Doctor winces. “I apologised.”

“Good on ya.” Brian squints at her. “You’re not here ta come back, are ya?”

The Doctor looks at her feet, which she supposes is answer enough. What she doesn’t expect is Brian’s hand on her shoulder.

“Good,” he says, meeting her eyes for once. “It’s been brilliant, Docta, to have you teach me an’ all, but you’ve been holding back. Waiting for something. You gotta go and get it now.”

The Doctor tries to smile, but she’s not sure what he means, and she’s never been good at faking expressions.

“Yep, that’s me,” she says. “I’m gonna… get it.”

Brain laughs. “Go on, then. And don’t forget that Masta bloke. He’s alright, even if his customer service is crap.”

The Doctor smiles properly then, and waves as she goes. 

When she gets back home, the Master is there, looking at something in a small briefcase. He snaps it shut before she can get a look at what’s inside, though.

“Hi,” he says, shoving the briefcase under the bed. “That was quick.”

She shrugs, and notices two slips of paper on the dining table.

“Oh, those are plane tickets,” says the Master, crossing the room to show her. “More expensive than I realized. And they said we have to be _ three hours  _ early.”

“Three hours?” she asks, scandalised. “That’s ridiculous. Do they even know how much we could do with three hours?”

“Yeah, I know,” says the Master, biting his lip. “There’s something else.”

“What is it?” she asks immediately.

“I… I didn’t realise how long human travel takes.”

“Oh shit. Is the plane longer than three hours?”

“A bit. We have to stop over. Twice.”

“How long is it?” she asks urgently, searching his face. “It can’t be more than ten hours. I’ll die if it’s more than ten hours.”

The Master screws up his face, and whispers, “Twenty-eight.”

The Doctor laughs. He’s making a joke, isn’t he? Must be. It can’t take twenty-eight hours to get from Australia to Britain. Can it?

The Master doesn’t laugh, and her heart sinks. He pulls something out of a bag she hadn’t noticed before, and holds it out to her.

“Crosswords,” he says. “And sudokus. Might help. I know you need things to do.”

She takes the hefty puzzle book, and her insides do something complicated. She’s been feeling like this around the Master a lot recently: confused, and oddly warm.

“Thanks,” she says, rubbing a thumb over the spine of the book. “But I’ll probably still die.”

“I know,” he grins, and she grins back. 

Sometimes the mortifying ordeal of being known is actually sort of okay.

That night, the Doctor isn’t as sleepy as she usually is. She adopts her usual position at first: face squashed into pillow, legs sprawling haphazardly, one arm draped carefully over the Master. She knows she’s bad at being patient, and that she has a tendency to over-measure time spent waiting, but even so. She thinks she must have been lying there, silent and awake, for  _ hours  _ before the Master speaks.

“Can’t sleep?” he whispers.

“How do you know I’m not asleep?”

“You’re jiggling your foot. It’s shaking the bed.”

“Sorry.”

The Master readjusts his head on the pillow so that it’s tilted towards her. She can just make out his eyes by the dim window light reflecting off them.

“It’s alright,” he says softly. “Something on your mind?”

A series of images flash through her head. The Master yelling at the selfish customer on their very first day of work at the garage. Consequentially, him getting fired. His face, and the way it glowed from the light of the TV when she looked across the couch. The Master sleeping. The Master coming home weighed down with vegetables. The Master chopping the crusts off her sandwiches. The way he’d looked at her when they’d sung together, like she was the sun and he was, at best, a small rocky planet. 

But that isn’t right, is it? She’s underestimating him again. They’ve never been anything but equal, no matter whose DNA came first. The Master knows that, has always known that, and the Doctor keeps trying to un-know it.

So if the Doctor is the sun, then the Master has to be a star as well. A binary system. Equal and opposite, orbiting each other forever, caught in each other’s pull. There’s something that rings very true in that, now she thinks of it, but she can’t figure out what word she’s looking for.

“Doctor?” the Master prompts. She wonders how long she’s been thinking for.

“Nothing,” she says. It sounds like the lie that it is. That’ll teach her to get all poetic in her head.

“Okay.”

There’s some silence, in which the Doctor feels increasingly awkward, because she can feel the Master still looking at her.

“Doctor?” he asks again.

“Yeah?”

“Are you going to miss anything about being human? Or being stuck on Earth? I mean, I know you’re here a lot anyway, but it’s sort of a different context. I imagine.”

The Doctor thinks about it, and starts talking before her brain catches up.

“I’ll miss working with Brian. He’s a good person, and he learns quickly. Quickly-ish. And I’ll miss watching stupid movies. And all the funny human rituals. Showering, eating, sleeping. They grow on you. Oh, and the sandwiches. I’ll especially miss the sandwiches.”

“I can still make you sandwiches,” says the Master inexplicably. 

“What, in between evil plots?”

“Something like that.”

She huffs a laugh, and then suddenly remembers something.

“Coldplay!”

“Cold-what?”

“Coldplay releases  _ Fix You _ this year, and we’re going to skip it! Ooh, how far away is it, we could just delay until… no, it’s a few months later, I think. Bummer.”

“Is that a song?”

“Yeah. It’s a bit overplayed, actually, but I always liked it.”

“How does it go?”

The Doctor scrunches up her nose.

“If I sing it, you have to promise not to laugh at me.”

The Master yawns, and says, “Promise I won’t. Too sleepy.”

She shuffles onto her side, which inadvertently brings her face-to-face with the Master. Combined with the arm that rests loosely on his side, it feels… very close. She closes her eyes and sings quietly to him.

_ When you try your best but you don't succeed _

_ When you get what you want but not what you need _

_ When you feel so tired but you can't sleep _

_ Stuck in reverse _

The Doctor always reads too far into song lyrics, empathizing with the singers and the fictional lives their lyrics talk about. She always imagines this song as some poor lost soul, hopelessly in love with someone who they thought would never reciprocate.

_ When the tears come streaming down your face _

_ 'Cause you lose something you can't replace _

_ When you love someone but it goes to waste _

_ Could it be worse? _

That’s silly, though, because love never goes to waste. Not real love. Real love means something that can’t be spoken, something that digs into your heart and sticks. And whoever the person from the song is in love with, well, perhaps they’re just being terribly oblivious. It happens.

_ Lights will guide you home _

_ And ignite your bones _

_ And I will try to fix you _

The Master, to his credit, isn’t laughing, instead staying very quiet as she sings. She’s sung to people before, but this feels different. She’s not sure why.

_ But high up above or down below _

_ When you’re too in love to let it show _

_ Oh but if you never try you'll never know _

_ Just what you're worth _

That’s the thing, isn’t it? If you’re in love, you have to let it show. You have to try. Because if you don’t, then the other person never gets the chance to even really think about it. Not that they couldn’t think about it. The theoretical recipient of the theoretical unreciprocated love could obviously take some time to realise, if they really tried, that there was someone quite desperately in love with them. 

And maybe, if the recipient realised, they might fall too.

_ Lights will guide you home _

_ And ignite your bones _

_ And I will try to fix you _

When the Doctor finishes singing, she leans forward to push her face into the Master’s shoulder. It’s more of an instinct than anything, an action that feels wholly right in the moment. He smells like wind in pine trees. She loves wind in pine trees. Wind in pine trees might just be her favourite thing in the whole universe. If she could only smell wind in pine trees, forever and ever, she would.

The Master touches his hand to the back of her neck and leaves it resting there, gently. Something warm unfurls inside her. For some reason, it makes her think about the oblivious idiot from the song. Maybe they’d just been around the person they were in love with for so long that they took them for granted. Maybe they’d gone to school together, or something, and been best friends. You didn’t think about best friends that much, because they wove themselves into your life, and before you knew it, they were just a given. A constant. A steady lifeline, holding you in place, but so steadily that you never really looked at it properly. 

The Doctor inhales the scent of wind in pine trees, and thinks about best friends, and love, and sandwiches. She’s not sure why, because she can’t think of what could connect it all, what would join the dots in her head. She can feel herself getting drowsy, pressed against the Master’s warmth, but she can also sense a revelation on the tip of her tongue, so she tries to muster up the brainpower to really think about it.

But it’s warm, and she’s tired, and try as she might, nothing comes of her internal struggle. She still feels like she might be missing something, but she’s already dozing off.

It can’t be that important.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The Doctor's POV frustated me _so much_ to write, so I hope you had fun reading it ;) until next time 💖


	13. So Very Fine

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “You’re going to use this to your advantage, aren’t you?” the Master sighs. “And people think you’re so _good.”_  
>  “But you know better?”  
> “I’m your best enemy. Of course I know better.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you all for being so patient. Hard to believe there’s just one more chapter to write 😭 I hope you enjoy this one! Stay safe, love you all ❤❤❤

Unsurprisingly, human-style travel is hell. They have to get up before the sun does, which in the Master’s opinion is completely unjust, and perhaps the worst thing ever to happen to him. Then they have to take a taxi, which involves social interaction, all while the sun is  _ still not up. _ They’re at the airport when it’s still dark, and only once they’re on the first plane, a tiny thing that won’t even take them out of the country, does the sun peek over the horizon.

The Master gives it a death glare, and subsequently has spots in his eyes for the next few minutes, which means that he can’t even read the safety handbook to make fun of it. 

“You haven’t rigged this plane, have you?” the Doctor asks. The Master thinks she intends it as a joke, but her voice is a little shaky, which makes him turn his head.

“I’d have to be pretty dumb to rig it without an escape route,” he says.

“But you  _ are _ dumb,” the Doctor says. The engines start, and they’re very loud in a plane this small. She closes her eyes. “The dumbest.”

The Master doesn’t quite know what to say to that, but as it turns out, he doesn’t have to say anything. The Doctor’s hand finds his, and her fingers are cold. It’s instinctive to thread them through his own and hold hers tightly, even as she threatens to cut off his circulation. His heart beats fast, and he wills his grip not to become sweaty. Then the plane starts to accelerate down the runway, the air catches beneath its wings, and they’re in the air.

“Doctor?” he tries tentatively, rubbing a thumb over hers.

One eye opens, and then the other, and her face relaxes.

“I’m fine,” she says, unconvincingly.

“I promise I didn’t rig the plane, if that’s really what you’re worried about.”

“It’s not that. I mean, it’s sort of that. I don’t - it doesn’t matter. You’re here now.”

“I am,” he says. “I promise. No more lies.”

Her eyes fix on his, and a small smile draws her mouth up.

“Then tell me. What’s in the briefcase?”

The hand that isn’t occupied with the Doctor’s touches the briefcase by his side automatically. His prototype medical scanner sits safe and snug inside. He’s not sure why he bothered to bring it, really, only he didn’t want to leave it behind.

“It’s a surprise.” He’s not sure why he doesn’t want to tell the Doctor about it, either. He has a feeling she’d be horribly smug.

She rolls her eyes. “Isn’t everything with you?”

“That’s why you love me,” he shoots back, and freezes for a moment in which his brain is too busy screaming to do anything else.  _ Play it off,  _ he tells himself, and forces his expression to unfreeze, resuming an easy, practiced grin.

She huffs and takes her hand out of his, digging around in her bag and producing the puzzle book.

“If you’re going to be annoying, I’m going to ignore you,” she announces, opening it and sniffing pointedly.

“Fine,” he says.

Ten seconds of ignoring the Master later, she turns to him and asks, “Do you have a pencil I can borrow?”

They surprise themselves by making it through the first and second flight without any major incidents. No cockpit bombs, no wings falling off, nothing of any interest whatsoever. Not until the third plane, the very long one that’s actually going to take them to Britain, does something unexpected happen.

“Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for your attention. There’s no need to panic, but one of our passengers is experiencing severe abdominal pain, so if there are any doctors on board, could you please make your way to the front of the plane. Any doctors on board, please make your way to the front of the plane. Thank you.”

The announcement is short and grainy, and startles the Doctor out of her doze. The Master, though, appears wide-eyed and alert.

“Did they say doctors…?” the Doctor mumbles, rubbing her eyes. The cabin is lowly lit by blue strips running down both aisles, and most passengers seem to be asleep, aside from the occasional face flickering in the light of tv screens.

But the Master is already on his feet, and then on his knees, fumbling around beneath his seat for something.

“Master?” she asks, sitting up.

“It’s alright,” he says, “I’ll handle it.” He produces the small black briefcase, the one he’s been so mysterious about, and sets off up the aisle.

The Doctor tries to follow, realizes she’s still wearing her seatbelt, swears loudly, apologizes in a whisper to the people around her for swearing loudly, and finally manages to get her seatbelt off to follow the Master.

She finds him crouched down by a young man sitting with his head in his hands.

“Where does it hurt?” the Master asks, and the man, wincing, pats the right side of his navel.

“I’m sure it’s nothing,” says the man, but when he looks up at the Doctor, his face has a noticeably sheen of sweat glinting in the faint light. “Are you a doctor?”

“Yes,” she says automatically, and then, “Er.” It occurs to her that the only medical advice she knows how to give is for periods (of which she has experienced two) and the food pyramid, which she still hasn’t really gotten to grips with.

“In fact,” says the Master, “This is  _ the _ Doctor. My research assistant, you understand. I’ve been working on a special scanning tool, and if it’s alright, I’d like to have a look at what’s going on with you. It’s non-invasive, so the worst thing that can happen is it won’t work.”

“Go ahead,” says the man weakly.

The Doctor is trying to process the sentences the Master is saying, and having a hard time of it. He opens the briefcase, and she reaches out a hand to blindly stop him, because surely this is an evil plan, surely the briefcase contains a gun or a bomb or a poison gas. But it doesn’t.

Inside the briefcase is a crude prototype of a galactic standard medscanner.

The Master picks it up, switches it on, and bleeps a slow circle pointing at the man’s abdomen. The Doctor watches, her hand falling lame to her side. She’s never seen the Master like this, caring and gentle and so very  _ human  _ in his human body. Except, of course, she has, because he’s been like this for months now, but her brain is jumbled and the medscanner is starting to show results so she focusses on that instead.

The Master peers at the little screen, and fiddles with the noise dial on the side of the scanner.

“It’s your appendix,” he says. “Not burst, but inflamed. You should get it checked out when we land, alright? Have you got painkillers?”

The man nods, and gives them a weak smile. 

“Thank you,” he says sincerely. “That’s such a relief to hear.”

“You’re welcome,” says the Master, and puts the scanner back in his briefcase, clipping it shut.

The Doctor’s brain jumble is starting to get louder and harder to ignore. The Master meets her gaze, and she’s struck by just how open it is. How vulnerable. His fingers twitch on the briefcase, and she realizes that he’s  _ nervous. _

She lets the beginnings of a smile show on her face, can feel the rest of it well on its way, and by the time they’re back in their seats, her face must almost be split in two by her grin.

“So,” says the Master, looking down at his seatbelt to click it into place.

“So,” says the Doctor. “You made a  _ medscanner.” _

“I did.” The Master still isn’t looking at her.

“For  _ helping people.” _

“Something like that.”

“And you hid it from me, because…?”

“Because I wanted it to be a surprise,” he confesses, looking up at her from beneath shaky, beautiful eyelashes. “I wanted to impress you.”

The Doctor’s brain unjumbles itself all at once. It feels like being back in her Time Lord body; like being able to see all the hidden, lovely points of time stretching out in front of her. She knows what to say; she knows what to do; and it feels so good to be  _ sure _ of it.

“It worked,” she says, taking his face in her hands. “I’m very,  _ very _ impressed.”

And she kisses him, just as she should have done centuries ago, just as she should have been doing every day of every year that’s passed by without them ever once taking this first step. His lips are so soft that she just wants to sink into them and drown forever, but he lets out a strangled sort of whimper in the back of his throat, which makes her backpedal for a second.

“Are you -” she begins to ask, but she’s cut off by his mouth on hers again. 

It feels a little frantic, a little desperate, but it also feels certain. Like an anchor, but not the kind she’s always hated, not the kind that tethers you in place. It feels like a TARDIS, the certainty of home combined with the certainty of freedom, of a future, of a life. 

She  _ adores _ it.

However, her seatbelt is proving to be an uncomfortable and entirely unwanted restraint. She reaches down with one hand to unclip it and breaks the kiss for a moment to launch herself at the Master, straddling him in his seat and curling her fingers in his hair. She feels dizzy with the rush of it, a heady sort of power running through her as she does exactly what she wants, brings him as close as possible, presses their foreheads together.

His breath is coming fast, and it smells like aeroplane toothpaste. She huffs a breathy laugh and kisses him again. It’s slower this time, and she lets him lead it, gentle and deep and so  _ caring. _ It makes her knees go so weak that she’s glad she’s not supporting her own weight. Time is starting to go a bit wibbly around the edges, and the clear surety the Doctor had been gifted just a few moments ago fades into a hazy glow of contentment. She doesn’t know exactly what’ll happen, but whatever it is, it’ll be okay. Just as long as they never stop this.

Time wibbles onwards, and eventually they do have to stop, but only because the Doctor thinks her heady feeling might actually be from oxygen deprivation. She pulls back, taking deep breaths, and slides her hand down to his cheek. He leans into it, his eyes still closed, his hair a little mussed, looking thoroughly - well - snogged.

“Hrgh,” he manages, his eyelids fluttering open. “I…”

The Doctor runs her thumb along his cheekbone, and he emits a faint whine before falling silent. She does it again. On the third time he frowns at her.

_ “You’re _ not allowed to make fun of  _ me  _ for being touch-starved,” he says, pushing her hand off his cheek only to take it between his.

“Aren’t I?” she teases. 

Then the Master puts a hand to her cheek and copies her. She has to lean forwards and rest her forehead against his to cope with the dizzying rush of affection.

“Okay,” she whispers. “Fine. We’re both completely deprived and deeply pathetic. Now  _ please _ take off my shirt.”

As she says it, something niggles the back of the Doctor’s brain. Some reason why she shouldn’t be shirtless in her current situation.

Oh, right.

“Um,” says the Master, glancing from side to side at the rows of mostly-sleeping people, “If that’s what you’re into, sure.”

“Not actually,” she says quickly, feeling her face go bright red. “I, er, forgot. About, you know. Being in public.”

The Master’s mouth twitches. “I see.”

She pulls the vortex manipulator out of her pocket and stares at it. “If I just put us forwards in time, maybe we could materialize when the plane’s landed and everyone is off.”

“Or maybe,” the Master says, taking the manipulator from her, “Just maybe, we’d materialize in the middle of the fucking sky with no plane to speak of and fall to our deaths.”

“Oh. Yeah. That’s what’d actually happen.” The Doctor’s cheeks feel hot enough to fry an egg. “How long till the end of the flight?”

The Master checks his watch. “Er, three hours.”

“Right.” She stares at him, words falling away from her. 

It keeps hitting her, like a very persistent but very welcome boomerang, that she loves him. It’s such a huge revelation that she thinks everything looks just a little different now, a little warmer, a little more vibrant. His eyes, too, are warm. But they’ve always been warm. She just hasn’t seen it.

“I’m sorry,” she blurts out. “For taking so long, I mean. I only just figured it all out now. Silly, really. Plastic daffodil should have been a right giveaway.” It seems like so long ago that she’d held the autonated flower beneath her nose, wondered what secrets it might hold.

A red undertone creeps across the Master’s skin, and he pulls at his collar. “I only figured it out a couple of weeks ago, actually.”

“Really? But you’ve always been so…”

“So what?” He raises his chin in defiance, which is undercut a little by the tips of his ears remaining tinged by pink.

“Single-minded? Obsessed? Eager to impress?”

“I was only being a good enemy.”

The Doctor traces his lower lip with her finger, and smirks at the silence that follows.

“Sure.”

“You’re going to use this to your advantage, aren’t you?” the Master sighs. “And people think you’re so  _ good.” _

“But you know better?” Her smirk grows. Is this what flirting is? She likes it. It makes her feel powerful, but not in the evil-dictator, oppressing the oppressed way. A sexy way.

“I’m your best enemy. Of course I know better.”

There’s not much that matters after that, just a lot of getting off the plane and getting into a taxi and trying to find a hotel that isn’t designed for obscenely rich people and eating food that satisfies most parts of the food pyramid (they settle on Thai takeaway). They sit with it beneath a large maple tree rustling in the breeze. It’s a spring night, warm enough not to immediately flee the outdoors, but with a cold bite in the wind that results in the Doctor pressing against the Master’s side.

He smiles, and lets his cheek rest on her hair. And it’s not like they haven’t been touching all this time, cuddling and spooning and taking each other’s hands, but there’s a clearer intention behind it now. The Master thinks he could get used to this.

Intentions are made clearer and clearer as the sun sets, and they walk to their not-too-expensive hotel together. The Master lets his the back of his hand brush hers repeatedly, thrilling in the sensation, now allowed, now meaning something.

“Oh, just take it already,” she says after the tenth time, and slides her fingers in between his. He looks across to see her duck her head awkwardly and stumble over the perfectly smooth pavement. 

_ That’s my Doctor, _ he thinks, and gets hit with a tidal wave of affection that he’s been repressing ever since they graduated from the Academy. It gives him all the courage he needs to tug on her hand, and when she turns to him, he kisses her. He had had an idea that it might dissolve the awkwardness between them, but it doesn’t, and it’s actually… fine. It’s fine that they bang noses, and clack teeth, and it’s fine that they get disapproving stares from a smart businessman in the hotel elevator, and it’s fine that his head thunks against the hotel room door where the Doctor pins him before kissing down his neck.

Better than fine. Much better than fine. So much better than fine that it’s quite extraordinary.

“Keycard?” he gasps when she’s tugging at his shirt and they’re still in the hallway.

“Keycard,” she mumbles. “Keycard!” 

Her mouth leaves his collarbone, and he would regret saying anything about it, but then she’s opening the door and tugging him in by the collar of his shirt, and the Master is never going to regret anything ever again.

He wakes the next morning and is, for a moment, disoriented. The sheets smell all wrong, and they’re too slippery, his feet sliding around with barely a twitch on his behalf. He’s also naked, which should really have been the first thing he noticed.

Then he remembers. He’s just had the best sex of his life. With the Doctor. The  _ Doctor. _

He rolls over, wanting to discuss the turn of events with no-one other than aforementioned mortal enemy, only to find an empty bed. Bile rises in his throat as familiarity hits, and he thinks:  _ not again.  _ This time meant more, this time is so much worse, and -

“Morning,” says the Doctor from the foot of the bed. She’s wearing a hotel dressing gown, sitting cross-legged and poking at her vortex manipulator with her tongue sticking out of the corner of her mouth. “Sleep well?”

He relaxes as quickly as he’d tensed up, and feels a big, dumb grin spread across his face. To hide it, he rolls over to faceplant into his pillow.

“Mmmf,” he mumbles, fully intending to go back to sleep.

Something soft hits the back of his head.

“You can’t lie in all day. Come on, help me with this.”

The Master pushes himself up, grumbling half-heartedly, and shuffles to the Doctor’s makeshift workspace.

“Whassit?” he asks, rubbing his eyes.

“I was thinking,” she says, tapping the medscanner which the Master hadn’t noticed was out, “That if we combined these, we could actually figure out how to reverse the DNA switch.”

“Turn ourselves back into Time Lords,” he breathes, suddenly wide awake. “We could. We’d just have to -”

“- reverse the polarity of the neutron flow,” they say together.

“We’re geniuses.”

“It’s true,” the Doctor agrees with him, and grins. “Well. Shall we get on with it, then? Back to the future?”

“Really?  _ Back to the future?” _

“It’s a perfectly accurate statement in this context,” she sniffs.

“That’s no excuse.”

“Oh, shut up. Come on, we should get dressed. Can’t turn up to the future in just a dressing gown.”

“What about a towel? If it’s good enough for interstellar hitchhikers, it’s good enough for us.”

The Doctor flicks his nose. “Get dressed, or I’ll hop forward a day without you.”

“You wouldn’t,” he says, but he gets up and rummages around his bag for clothes all the same.

Ten minutes later they’re standing in the centre of the room, facing each other, both holding the vortex manipulator with one hand.

“It’s time,” the Doctor says, and the Master wonders why she always calls him the dramatic one.

He nods, screwing up his eyes, and feels misery building in his gut at the thought of going their separate ways. Especially after all the kissing and the sex and the things that he desperately wants more of.

“Get it over with, then,” he hisses.

The Doctor sighs. “Hang on. Landing in 2020 is tricky. The last time I tried it, well, let’s just say lizard people are real and they’ll probably never forgive me.”

The Master opens his eyes and peers at the tiny feed of space-time continuum visible on the manipulator screen. It reminds him of spaghetti that’s been trampled into thick carpet.

“What the hell is wrong with it?” he demands. “That’s not just wibbly-wobbly, that’s wibbling right off the track and catapulting into the wrong universe for a day.”

“A lot of fixed-time events,” the Doctor grimaces, fiddling with the knobs. “And psychic perception effects are a bitch. See that? That spot right there?”

It’s less of a spot, and more of a hulking mass taking up roughly half the screen. The Master nods.

“That’s March.”

“That’s one month?”

“Like I said,” the Doctor mutters, biting her tongue in concentration, “A bitch.”

“What’s the other, uh, spot?”

The Doctor winces. “November.”

“And we’re avoiding those how, exactly? Because if we’re not careful, we’re going to jump right into the middle of them.”

“I know, I know. Look, it’s not going to get any less risky. That’s the best I can do.” She indicates the screen, and he peers at it doubtfully.

“Fine. But if we end up getting chased by some wackos in hazmat suits, I’m blaming you.”

The Doctor’s finger hovers over the  _ travel _ lever, and the Master keeps his eyes open this time, watching her face, bracing for the horrible staticky flow of vortex around them. 

But it doesn't come.

The Doctor looks up at him, her eyes wide and worried. She frowns. He frowns.

“We’re basically idiots, aren’t we?” she says, lowering the manipulator.

The Master blinks. “Wait. Do you not want to go to the future either?”

“I thought you wanted to go!”

“But I thought you wanted to go!”

They stare at each other, and the Master realizes that they’re quite possibly the biggest dumbasses ever to grace the planet with their dumbassery.

“Well,” says the Doctor, and throws the vortex manipulator down on the bed. “That’s that.”

The Master feels, again, as if the rug has been pulled out from under him.

“What now, then?”

“I know a surefire way to get to 2020,” she tells him, grinning. “It might take a while, though. Fifteen years, to be exact.”

The Master stares at their joined hands, his heart rising like a balloon in his chest. He doesn’t want to dare to hope. Fifteen years?  _ Fifteen years  _ to spend with the Doctor?

“Are you sure?” he asks, swallowing audibly. “I mean, you won’t get bored of me?”

“Master.” She leans forwards and kisses his forehead. “I love you, idiot.”

He feels his hands begin to shake.

“I love you too,” he manages, and then she’s kissing him again, and it’s more than he deserves, more than he could ever deserve, but there’s no way he won’t take it.

“Koschei,” the Doctor says.

“Theta,” he whispers back, and feels her lips smile under his. 

He pulls back then, twists his fingers in her hair, looks into her eyes. Unflinching. Unyielding. She meets his gaze with equal intensity, and it’s bone-achingly familiar, but with a new layer of acceptance and acknowledgement that makes him weak at the knees.

“Doctor,” he says, a question, an answer, a lifetime.

She smiles more broadly. 

“Master.”

And maybe they do deserve this. A break from it all. A fifteen-year holiday to spend with each other, human and Earth-bound.

Human, Earth-bound, and happy.

**Author's Note:**

> [come yell at my tumblr](https://gay-star-knight.tumblr.com/)


End file.
